- Reduce abstractions, everything is an abstraction e.g. NPM modules, go modules, databases. Just go with server, template engine, database, and Taskfiles; and you are good to go.
- Don't buy into cloud-vendor specific managed offerings. Use cheap hosting, not major cloud providers. Setup a server with Kubernetes, docker-compose or podman-compose using a reverse proxy like Caddy. Don't buy into cloud-vendor specific tooling that may use a less optimized setup, less secure setup and high pricing for less resources and power overall. Just use something like k0s, k3s, Flatcar, Fedora Core OS or just plain Alpine.
- Product development speed over Infrastucture.
- Visible features e.g. GUIs are valued more than e.g. databases with sophisticated data and data models.
- Go only with 3 features. Don't try to price tens of features if you haven't implemented them, and you haven't. Go with 3 implement them, and then communicate with your customer. That way your customer can better reason about your work, knows what you do, and if you mess up and need longer, it's not too big of a deal because it were just 3 features and not 30. Be cautious though to not take 3 features that include 10 subfeatures, use actual atomic features.
- Have an amazing contract e.g. transfer of ownership after full payment, termination fee, liability removal, open-source clause, higher-order events, expectations defined/specified in a document i.e. functional specification document, warranty clauses, payment definitions, non-disclosure clauses, acceptance and transfer, third-party software inclusions and liabilities, third-party contractors and liabilites, external service reliances for the product to work, formulate contract for type of contract in Germany usually "Werkvertrag", form of updates to agreements and functional specification document, how changes to requirements are performed and accepted etc., also now expect tariffs.
- If you have partners include a fee or termination clause for the project in the case of absence or leave of your partners and make sure the contract states that the leaving party is fully responsible for any claims if this is the case. This way you can prevent having the obligation to fulfill the contract on your own, especially in Germany. This way you don't have to worry to deliver alone. It doesn't matter who you know, anyone can at any time change his mind to want to do something else.
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