There’s something great about the creation process: when it’s shipped!
Starting anything is great and really positive but let’s face it, human has to fight and kick his own butt all day long until what he decided to create really comes out.
Derek Yu, a video game creator, talks about finishing games: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game
And it reminded me, Seth Godin talked about shipping in this great presentation: http://vimeo.com/5895898
I think that humanity is indeed finally learning how to master the shipping skill, the idea spread and I am happy to help it spread a little bit.
Until now it took a lot of time and resources to master this skill on your own. Most people did not have even the opportunity to think about this. But thanks to the Internet, if you are listening, and if you are eager to know how to be successful (or at least how to suck less), you will be able to learn.
I remember all these childhood projects we started with friends, only a tiny tiny portion of them really shipped. Of course they shipped in our imagination and that’s why we enjoyed starting new projects every week. We where missing a shipping teacher, someone who would have explained us how to finalize the project, how to keep concentrated, how to drop parts, that would have been awesome!
School and university should broadly teach how to ship someone’s own creation, how to keep motivation and concentration. There is something missing and a lot more good (and less unemployment) would come out if this skill was more advertised.
The truth is: ship often and you will success. If it fails, try again. Remember the Agile programmer’s motto: release soon, release often.
Programmers are trying to teach humanity how to ship (because they so often failed to produce software) and that’s a cool part of our job :)
