Hey Hacker News! I was recently involved in a startup where the CEO had made a crazy complex app with prisma - it did loads of things but it was a mad balancing act of insecurity, bugs, badly mangled code and database design that left a lot to be desired. I think my problem is they were just copying something that already exists rather than making something new that needs extreme user testing for it to become a thing. Obviously on such a codebase the CEO could get things done pretty fast but I couldn’t help feel it was completely hopeless for anyone else trying to make the project work correctly. Of course even with all this brittle code there were no tests.
My question first is
a) has Hacker News/YC ever seen a startup fail because the codebase is so bad.
b) what is the best calculation to make when trading off code quality vs features?
c) do most YC startups write tests and try to write cleanish code in V1 or does none of this matter?
Should we just be chucking shit at the wall and seeing what sticks? Do most startups bin v1 and jump straight to v2 once they have traction?
My question first is
a) has Hacker News/YC ever seen a startup fail because the codebase is so bad.
b) what is the best calculation to make when trading off code quality vs features?
c) do most YC startups write tests and try to write cleanish code in V1 or does none of this matter?
Should we just be chucking shit at the wall and seeing what sticks? Do most startups bin v1 and jump straight to v2 once they have traction?