Episode 76: Advanced Strategies vs. Just Shipping, and Other Listener Questions

We don’t have a sponsor this episode, but we are celebrating 100,000 downloads! With a sponsorship, about 2,100 people will listen to your ad. If you’re interested, visit applyfilters.fm to check it out.

Today, Pippin and Brad will answer questions from the audience. You’ve asked some great questions through Twitter, email, and Post Status Slack.

Some of the highlights of today’s show include:

Working in advanced strategies vs. just shipping. Is it better to just get the item out the door, or to get the product perfect and smooth out all of the rough edges before offering it? Brad and Pippin have different philosophies on this, and they discuss their thoughts on finding the balance between polishing and speed.

Considerations to keep in mind when a feature is released and it’s not being used. Is it because it’s too unpolished, or because it’s just not a worthwhile feature?

Two development areas where the advanced strategies vs. just shipping question applies and needs to be carefully considered.

Tips on debugging front-end performance and what to do if JavaScript is using too much CPU.

What PHP features would make WordPress development easier if WP were no longer restricted by supporting PHP 5.2.

Recommended plug-in templates.

Tips on handling and encouraging responsible disclosure of security vulnerabilities.

Links and Resources:

Apply Filters on Twitter

Boilerplate Generator

Boilerplate

If you’re enjoying the show we sure would appreciate a Review in iTunes. Thanks!

Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Apply Filters, the podcast all about WordPress development. Now here’s your hosts, Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard.

BRAD: Welcome to Episode 76. This time Pippin and I will be answering questions from our audience that gave us questions through Twitter, Post Status Slack, and email.

But first, we do not have a sponsor this episode, but we are celebrating 100,000 download. We have ticked over. We’re like 101,000 or something, isn’t it, Pippin? Something like that.

PIPPIN: One hundred and fifteen thousand.

BRAD: One hundred and fifteen thousand. Ooh, that’s even better. Yes, so if you are interested in sponsoring, you can get this spot right at the top of the show for about $300, and that will get you about 2,100 unique downloads, so about 2,100 people will listen to your ad. That’s about $0.14 per person, so a pretty good value there, I think. Yeah, if you’re interested in sponsoring the show, we have a form at ApplyFilters.fm, so check it out, and we’d be happy to talk about most products. Not every product, but most products.

Pippin, shall we proceed?

PIPPIN: Yeah, let’s dive in. We’ve got a number of questions from people this time. Some were left over from when we asked for questions a couple weeks go. We’re going to start with one from Travis Northcutt. He asked a really good question in Post Status Slack this morning. It might take up our full time, and so if we end up just talking on this one for a while, then we’ll go ahead and get to the rest of the questions the next episode and who knows however many after that.

Anyway, I’m going to read to you what Travis wrote, and then we may rephrase it just a little bit. Travis said, “So if you think it’s going to be an interesting discussion, perhaps talking about working in advanced strategies vs. just shipping. I often get excited about learning some new techniques or tools, but it’s easy to get sucked into over-optimizing for perfection as opposed to just getting something built. You could spend hours and hours using all the latest best practices, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ship your product.”

Really, I think what Travis is really asking here is having a discussion on the philosophy of just ship it, basically get the MVP out the door as early as possible, versus getting your product, whether it’s a 1.0, a 2.0, a 3.0 perfect and getting all of the rough edges smoothened out and making sure that it’s really well polished. I think this is an