While I agree that it's probably impossible to produce a whole web application in 3 hours, I think the point here is more about incremental delivery_. Note that in the post, OP is actually talking about 3-hour features, not entire apps (after step ‘show to people’ you can go back and develop another 3-hour feature, if you like). And I doubt there exists a web application (or almost any piece of software, really) that couldn't be developed this way.
Problems, however, arise when your idea requires specific domain knowledge which you haven't got yet; it's likely that you'll need some time to become comfortable in this particular area. Though I doubt it should necessarily be counted as time spent on app development.
And there's always some in-brain idea development. Say, you have an idea of blogging via email. You cook this idea inside for a few days, working out some details in background, then sit down, code for a three hours, and boom, you have posterous. Then you see that people don't care about email blogging, but they care about bells and whistles, so you sit another 3 hours and create basic skinning support. It's better than when after two weekends on email-blogging you discover that you were going in wrong direction. (Of course, I know nothing about real Posterous development, I just tried to clarify.)
Also, I think it's generally useful to be able to produce something in 3 hours. You need to keep your tools hot & ready.
Comments
While I agree that it's probably impossible to produce a whole web application in 3 hours, I think the point here is more about incremental delivery_. Note that in the post, OP is actually talking about 3-hour features, not entire apps (after step ‘show to people’ you can go back and develop another 3-hour feature, if you like). And I doubt there exists a web application (or almost any piece of software, really) that couldn't be developed this way.
.. _: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IncrementalDelivery
Problems, however, arise when your idea requires specific domain knowledge which you haven't got yet; it's likely that you'll need some time to become comfortable in this particular area. Though I doubt it should necessarily be counted as time spent on app development.
And there's always some in-brain idea development. Say, you have an idea of blogging via email. You cook this idea inside for a few days, working out some details in background, then sit down, code for a three hours, and boom, you have posterous. Then you see that people don't care about email blogging, but they care about bells and whistles, so you sit another 3 hours and create basic skinning support. It's better than when after two weekends on email-blogging you discover that you were going in wrong direction. (Of course, I know nothing about real Posterous development, I just tried to clarify.)
Also, I think it's generally useful to be able to produce something in 3 hours. You need to keep your tools hot & ready.