There was a characteristic talk at one of last Stackoverflow Poscasts.
One of the hosts said he had to bring the dog to the dog-park every now and then and it sucked when there were no other dogs to socialize in there. Besides he would’ve liked to talk to people too. So he wanted to build a calendar app for the neighboring dog owners to coordinate the time. He asked, what tech should he use.
What’s interesting is what happened next. Instead of diving into the problem the co-hosts decided first to invent a name for the app and then after a couple of questions figured out a decent Proof-Of-Concept that was extremely simple, didn’t use any database and just stored the data in a json file.
I find it really cool to have exercises like that – for me it’s a bit hard to switch to the idea that with new things you need to make stuff as simple as possible but at the same time figure out why are you developing the thing and who and why should use it.
“What about the marketing?” asked one of the hosts.
“Well I thought about putting a laminated poster at the dog park”
“Oh, I would spend $30000 on Google Ads, but your way is more targeted, that’s true”
Nice :)