Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Minimal Bootstrap "Hello World"

I hadn't checked out Bootstrap in a while, but came back to it this weekend while working on a side project. I re-read its getting started guide and found that their "hello world" was still too complex for my taste. It included cruft for IE8 support and required uploading extra files to my server.

So I present my own, further slimmed down, version of a Bootstrap hello world example. Bootstrap tells us that all of these lines are necessary:

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

We then need to include the minified Bootstrap CSS file and a default theme.
  
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap-theme.min.css">
  </head>

I'm using Bootstrap's recommended CDN so there's no need to upload extra files to my own server. Finally, our body includes one simple container with two example columns, and the minified required .js files.
<body>
<div class="container">
  <h1>Hello, world!</h1>

  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-md-6">.col-md-6</div>
    <div class="col-md-6">.col-md-6</div>
  </div>
</div>

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
</body>
</html>


An important note is that I've stripped out elements needed for IE8 support. I also haven't had the chance yet to test this template in IE.
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Monday, July 20, 2015

Don't give up?

Not an amazing article, but short enough to be worth recommending:
There’s actually a good name for this in the realm of psychology. It’s called “goal disengagement,” and it’s actually a good thing when you get older. A 2011 study on the topic ... found that a willingness to give up goals that were no longer attainable actually helped decrease depression in the elderly. 
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-art-of-quitting
It doesn't necessarily support the point made in my previous post but provides incentive and a rational explanation for not persevering beyond the point of failure.
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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Failure and Giving Up

You can't fail, if you don't give up. -- Stephen in The Last Kiss
It's a "deep" statement that isn't obviously true or false.

There's an entrepreneur I know who has tried an idea that has clearly failed. It's failed due to a combination of it not being needed enough and other people doing it better. I don't know which is the killer of his implementation, but one of them is. This person has still not realized that their version won't ever be enough or that it fails to beat competitors' versions. Yet they keep trying. They've failed, but they have not given up.

Here are some signs that tell me they've failed:
  • It's been a long time. The person has been at it for 8+ years. Set a deadline for yourself. If it's over some reasonable amount of time, you're probably deluding yourself.
  • Failure is ignored. The person has already achieved failure. The product has no adoption after repeated attempts. There's no revenue, no recent investment, nothing. The world is saying he's failed but the person is ignoring it. Set metrics for yourself. If you haven't achieved them, you've probably failed.
But here's how the original quote could be true. The most successful founders are "relentlessly resourceful" [PG's great essay]. They are relentless. They do something which is resisted. It doesn't matter how long it's been. It doesn't matter how many signs paint a picture of failure. If they believe, they can make it true. 
  • Maybe you haven't tried for long enough to figure out if the market wants your product. Maybe, with just the right change, growth will accelerate and you'll find product market fit.
  • In the movie the quote is from, this problem is considered in a personal context. You've waited on her doorstep for hours. But maybe it takes days. She's told you there's no hope. But maybe she doesn't mean it. Or maybe she means it but doesn't realize that there is hope, and she just doesn't know it yet.
The problem is, the statements supporting the original quote being true are silly graduation-speech-style stupid self-help statements. In reality, there are thousands of people who believe they can overcome failure but actually can't. They simply morph what they were originally believing into something different, and fool themselves about their original belief.

It's the pessimist in me... but you can fail even if you don't give up. The original statement is not true.
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