Get it right once
Published: 2022-09-17 07:57:51

According to legend Thomas Edison tried to create a functioning lightbulb 2,000 times before succeeding. A journalist asked him why he didn't simply give up after 1,000 failures - At which point Edison's answer was as follows.

> I only needed to get it right once

Software development innovation is not like creating cars. If you create a car, and you fail a million times, you're left with a mountain of scraps, and you've spent a bajillion on materials. Software development innovation is arguably much more similar to Edison's work. When creating innovative software you can afford to fail a bajillion times, because you only need to get it right once. In a way it could be argued that it's statistically impossible to _not_ succeed as long as you don't give up. I've got Winston Churchill on my wall for these reasons, because my favourite quote was one of his, and it goes like this.

> Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up!

If you never give up, winning is inevitable. This is another lesson taught by chess computers such as those I refer to in [this article](https://dev.to/polterguy/how-to-create-high-quality-software-m67).

Edison had a problem though, which was that every time he experimented he had to use materials. With software development innovation all you need is to spend time, a _lot_ of time. There are no material costs, and you don't generate mountains of scraps. However, you need to spend a _lot_ of time if you are truly innovating.

Most people give up during this process, which is why only 1 of 10 software startups succeeds. Unless you're willing to give it all, you might as well stop before you even start. However, if you continue, software has one thing that's unique about it, that leads to success if you simply keep on moving forward. And that thing is encapsulated in the following quote from Edison.

> You only need to get it right ONCE!

Hence, if you keep on improving your stuff, silently improving it, again and again, over and over again, never giving up - Winning becomes statistically inevitable!

Our [LowCode CRUD generator](https://aista.com/) is in its 250+ release now. Every single release fixed some bugs, added some features, improved some aspect of it. Hence, if you tried it a year ago, the project is almost a completely different project today, and I would encourage you to give it another try today.

> Because, we only need to get it right once

In our last release for instance, we significantly improved how we are handling date and times, in particular related to _"sliding"_ in its frontend CRUD data grid parts. In addition, we've added support for image fields, email fields, hyperlink fields and row level security. We have also added a user management component to the frontend result, allowing users to exclusively use the generated frontend as their administration panel when creating web apps. We have removed tons of bugs in it, such as for instance a bug occurring when you install a database plugin from SQL Studio, etc, etc, etc. And these improvements were only the last two versions. If you tried it 50 versions ago, imagine how it is today?

I want to repeat the conclusion of this article, simply because we're now so close to the finish line I can smell victory. And that is ...

> We only need to get it right ONCE!