This rant bought to you by yet another unfinished project.
As hard as you work to avoid it, there seems to be no way to avoid the good old 80/20 rule. It seems that no matter what you're working on, 80% of the work takes 20% of the time, and the remaining 20% of the work takes (at least) 80% of the remaining time on the project.
The '80/20 rule', as it's commonly known, is an implentation of the Pareto Principle, originally conceived by observing that 80% of income in italy was received by 20% of the Italian population. (Source: Wikipedia).
In software development this is very visible. It doesn't take a developer long to get a working mock-up online, complete with a basic interface and the most important functionality. But one can almost guarantee that this mock-up will not include some small yet important features that a public, commercial product requires if it's to be used by the masses.
I'm a big fan of Django. But I'm also annoyed at the way it lets us emphasise Pareto's principles. Rapid Web Application Development is the current 'in thing' - using Django or Ruby on Rails, one can get a basic CRUD application online with a minimum of fuss. It works well, it's stable, and it probably has a funky logo and some AJAX magic. There is a good chance it'll have some Google Ads on it to try and cover some hosting costs.
However it'll be missing all the details that make an application truly kick ass. It'll be missing the automatic e-mail notifications that get sent on a monthly basis to subscribers. It'll be missing the extra database fields that make the user experience even better by keeping detailed analysis of user activity to allow the site to be customised to their specific needs. It'll be missing the automated reporting tools that make mundane data truly valuable (both to management types, and to advertisers).
Maybe I'm just impatient, but in this day and age of 'release early, release often' there seems to be too many half-done projects. There are too many almost-there Web-2.0 weblications that, if given that 80% of time, will be something quite new. Earth shattering, even. Something that's ready to make it's developer piles of cash.
It seems there are too many good ideas floating around, but people lose the motivation to get them to that finished and polished stage that makes people say wow. Of course, there are exceptions - just take a look at Tabblo and Flickr to see how a great idea was turned fantastic with the use of some cool technology. Looking at these two sites makes me wonder how many image sharing and social network sites were started but never made it past the beta stage.
Me? I'm working on an online gift registry service for engaged couples. I'm a victim: the site works (and, I must say, works very well), and couples have successfully used it for their bridal registries, but it needs some work around the edges if I want it to be valuable to anybody other than my own small group of friends. There is no reason it cannot be monetized - but people only pay for quality.
Damn that last 20%.