Hacker News Reader

It is a very ugly term; 'eat what you cook' is clearer. The point is that rather than theorising about 'what people want' you should build tools that solve your own problems, and practice with your own site first. This was important early on in Indieweb as there are a lot of people proposing that online social networks should work in a specific way, and demanding others change; building something you use daily yourself is a better basis for discussion.

View on HN

Thanks for the context - I read that 'eat what you cook' line but was unsure what that had to do with email.

Ultimately I agree with the ideas here, even if they require a little unpacking. A lot of great things have come about from people solving their own problems first, later realizing that other people experience the same problems. Evan You's initial work on Vue is a good example of this: he created it to solve actual problems in his own work, not to solve hypothetical problems on day one.

The specific reference to email was based on frustration with endless mailing list bikeshedding, especially on 'standards' mailing lists. Building a community around irc, wikis and posting on our own sites was a deliberate alternative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com