Yeah it's a philosophy I've started to adopt. Better to get in when the product is new and there is hype, to enjoy fast-paced improvements from a new competitor that just wants to create a cool product, than to come in later when the hype has died down, the original founders have exited and the enshittification starts.

We all know the hype cycle of programming languages. Hype, disillusion then plateau of productivity. It's not the same with startups: there is only hype, peak, followed a long descent to the mean and death.

The hipsters were right.

Not sure if that letdown will trump whatever minor time savings I have accrued while it was good, though. To make it worse, first make it better, then make it back as before.

It’s the same reason I choose not to make use of insane promotions that ride app space newcomers tend to provide. I could use Bolt DeLuxe (or whatever is the new hotness in town) for a couple months, but the anticipation of how I will soon suffer as it becomes more and more of a ripoff with incompetent drivers and absent customer support, and how I’ll waste willpower on changing my habit again, makes me wonder if it’s really worth it. Instead I could in meantime exercise my taxi hailing skills (in this analogy, practice crafting queries and otherwise working around the limitations of worse search engines).