A common frustration I hear among Hiveans is our lack of cooperation. We all try — and I include myself in this — to build things of value, but we hardly ever stop to see if someone else is already working on the same idea.
“I can do it better!” some of us think. Stupidly so, perhaps — but stupid we love to be.
Most of the time, when I think something isn’t too hard, when I convince myself I can build it better or simpler, I end up learning some harsh lessons. Experience tends to correct my confidence rather quickly.
Still, those lessons don’t really stop me. I keep walking down similar paths. What they do give me, however, is a moment of pause… a moment to reflect.
Many months ago, I shared here on this blog the idea of integrating a chat feature into Snapie. Around that time, the team at Ecency released their own chat — something I could integrate directly. So I decided to change my usual pattern.
No need to rebuild something that already works well, I thought.
And yet today, I find myself reconsidering that choice.
This isn’t to say I don’t value what the team at Ecency has built — I obviously do. The issue is something else entirely: I have ideas. Things I want to experiment with. Directions I want to take a chat system that I simply can’t pursue if I keep relying on theirs.
Does that make me an idiot?
Maybe so.
But an idiot with a vision, I submit.
This week I started working on Hangouts. At the moment it's mostly backend work, so there’s nothing particularly pretty or impressive to show yet. Still, as I write out the idea and start ironing out the details, a realization keeps creeping back into my mind:
I probably won’t be able to integrate Ecency’s chat into this anyway.
Listen, it’s late at night and my brain is a little fried. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with a different perspective.
But if history is any guide, I probably won’t.
It seems I just can’t help myself.
— MenO
