66Not shipping is the big mistake

Now the most important thing in this whole section.

An enormous number of projects don't die of bad code. They die because the author never showed them. There's always something left to do: one more button, a bit prettier, "let me fix this and then I'll publish".

You can build like that forever, and it's very comfortable - because until you show it, nobody has said it's bad.

The truth is that nobody notices the unfinished bits the way you do. What feels shameful to you is simply not the point for someone from outside. What they definitely will notice is the project not being on the internet at all.

A practical rule: publish when the main thing works. Not when it's perfect, but when the main path runs start to finish. Everything else gets finished on the live one.

And one more thing: people's reactions change a project more than a month of solo polishing. You find out that the important part wasn't the part you were polishing.