Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

August 2021

Aug. 25, 2021

Allo shows the ultimate failure of Google's Minimum Viable Product strategy. MVP works when you have almost no competition, or if you are taking a radically different approach to what's on the market, but it completely falls on its face when you are just straight-up cloning an established competitor. There's no reason to use a half-baked WhatsApp clone when regular WhatsApp exists.

Ron Amadeo

# 10:28 pm / product-management, google

Aug. 28, 2021

Dynamic content for GitHub repository templates using cookiecutter and GitHub Actions

Visit Dynamic content for GitHub repository templates using cookiecutter and GitHub Actions

GitHub repository templates were introduced a couple of years ago to provide a mechanism for creating a brand new GitHub repository starting with an initial set of files.

[... 1,413 words]

Aug. 30, 2021

Building a desktop application for Datasette (and weeknotes)

Visit Building a desktop application for Datasette (and weeknotes)

This week I started experimenting with a desktop application version of Datasette—with the goal of providing people who aren’t comfortable with the command-line the ability to get Datasette up and running on their own personal computers.

[... 1,423 words]

Unshipped work is inventory and it costs you money as it spoils

Avery Pennarun

# 5:46 am / deployment

2021 » August

MTWTFSS
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031