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Creating... Graphics... Sound... that's all execution.

It's more than that. It's about connecting with a customer. Even if someone isn't paying you (Twitter), anyone who uses your product or service is a customer.

Yeah, programming is the easy part of execution. It's naive to think that's the only part of execution. Getting customers is execution. Scaling your business is execution. Monetizing effectively is execution.

Why do you think so many startups fail to get any traction? It probably has little to do with the quality of their code.

Programming aside, UI, and design in general, strike me as pretty important.

Just look at what separated early Yahoo and early Google, a confused page of text and links vs. a simple search box. Was this necessarily the reason Google ended up winning out? Maybe not, but it's probably a strong reason for why.