The Bootstrapped Compiler and the Damage Done
Published in 2013, this chronicle by @Baustin details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 8 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
Well, the author is speaking only for himself :-) I think most typical programmers understand other types of programs better than compilers.
But great post, I agree a lot. Just like professional politicians are overrepresented in parliaments, compiler experts are overrepresented in language design. Most programs I've written belong to one of three categories:
- Number crunching - GUI to display and edit data - Web app (HTML + JS frontend to a database)
The classical languages for these kind of apps are Fortran (nowadays C++), Visual Basic o_O, and PHP. I don't have to tell you how each of these suck for various reasons. But each language has special features that make writing specific kinds of applications nicer.
VB for example had a tight integration of the GUI designer, syntax sugar for accessing COM components, and so on. It had a `with` keyword that let you set lots of properties on GUI elements easily:
``` With form1 .Title = "Hello World" .Width = 640 .Height = 480 With .btnOK .Font.Bold = True ' ... End With End With
``` I'm not saying it was a great language... But one day I'd really like to design my own language, tailored to the kind of problems I have to solve. The result might look less like Haskell, and more like The Homer [1], but it would let me get stuff done without thinking to much about it.
[1] http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer