Day 2: Why Working Harder Isn't Enough

Jared Ricks — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:42:10 +0000

Series: Return of the Coder — In 80 Days
Tags: #buildinpublic #devjournal #programming #startup

When I was a boy, I sold Scout-O-Rama tickets. The math was simple: knock on more doors, get more sales, win a bigger prize. Selling software isn't that different — make more quality products, have a better chance of selling one.

The Math That Changed Everything

I did some math today that I can't stop thinking about.

Over 90% of indie products fail commercially. Most of their creators never ship another one. So here's the question: if each product has a 99% chance of failure, how many products do you need for a 99% chance that at least one succeeds?

P(at least one success) = 1 - (0.99)^n >= 0.99

n >= ln(0.01) / ln(0.99)
n >= 458.2

459 products.

Four hundred and fifty-nine.

I have 3 paid products. That's 456 to go. I have 67 working days left (no Sundays). That's 6.8 products per working day. Nearly seven. Every single day. For the rest of the challenge.

Just knock on more doors, right?

The Ceiling

Even with AI helping me all day — and I mean all day — each product still needs architecture, building, testing, payment integration, store listings, and review.

I shipped three today. Going as fast and hard as I possibly can. That's my ceiling.

My ceiling is 3. The math needs 6.8.

It's Not Just Quantity

And here's the thing the Scout-O-Rama math doesn't account for: no one wants trash.

I can't just churn out 6.8 pieces of junk a day and call it a strategy. Every product has to actually work. Actually solve a problem. Actually be something someone would pay for. Quality isn't optional — it's the whole point. A hundred broken products are worth exactly zero.

The challenge isn't just shipping fast. It's shipping fast and shipping well. At the same time.

Working Harder Won't Fix This

I can't write 459 quality products by hand. Not in 80 days. Not in a year.

This is beyond prompt engineering. This is beyond typing questions into ChatGPT. 6.8 quality products a day doesn't come from working harder — I'm already at my limit.

It has to come from working smarter. Building systems that do real work without me standing over them. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. But I know my ceiling, and I know the math.

Something has to change.

My Competition

Let me be honest about who I'm up against.

My son has always produced the highest quality work. Always. In college, during a game dev class, the entire class was given a prompt and exactly 5 hours to finish. Most students didn't even complete it. He not only finished — he did it correctly. The professor showed off his work in front of the entire class without warning him first.

That's who I'm competing with.

He's taking a focused approach right now. Quality over quantity. Depth-first. And knowing him, whatever he ships will be polished.

I'm going breadth-first. Volume. The math play.

But here's what keeps me up at night: we both need to be faster AND better. We're already working as hard as we can. Working harder isn't the answer anymore. We need to work smarter.

The Jabberwocky

My ceiling is 3 products a day. The math needs 6.8. And they all have to be good.

When I was a kid, knocking on more doors was enough. It isn't anymore.

I feel like I'm about to face my own Jabberwocky — knowing the fight looks impossible before it's even begun. The numbers say I can't win by doing what I'm doing now.

But then again, the Jabberwocky was supposed to be unbeatable too.

What I Shipped Today

Yesterday I shipped a free VS Code extension before my son woke up. Today I shipped three paid ones.

CleanLinks — a Chrome extension that strips 127+ tracking parameters from URLs as you browse. $2.99 Pro upgrade. Currently in Chrome Web Store review.

Inline Dependency Size — a VS Code extension that shows the gzipped bundle cost of every import right in your editor. $4.99 Pro.

Dead Code Highlighter — a VS Code extension that finds unused functions, variables, imports, and exports across your entire project. $5.00 Pro.

I also rebuilt artizansoftware.com as a real storefront for everything.

Scoreboard

	Me	Him
Day 1	.env Sync Checker (free)	--
Day 2	CleanLinks ($2.99), Inline Dependency Size ($4.99), Dead Code Highlighter ($5.00)	--
Products	4	0
Paid Products	3	0
Revenue	$0	$0

78 days to go.

The math says I need to work smarter. Follow the series to see if I figure out how.

Follow the series: Return of the Coder — In 80 Days
Website: artizansoftware.com

Day 1: Return of the Coder — in 80 days!

Jared Ricks — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:46:06 +0000

My son graduated CS summa cum laude. Top of his class. He's brilliant — and he's already been making money selling software while still in school.

I've been writing code since before he was born. Between the two of us, we have every reason to succeed and zero excuses not to.

Right now, neither of us has a steady paycheck.

So here's what we're doing instead of waiting for someone to hire us.

80 days. Build real software. Sell it. Make a living or go broke trying.

Phileas Fogg bet he could go around the world in 80 days and everyone laughed. We're making our own version of that bet — father vs son, shipping every day, tracking every dollar. This isn't a side project or a learning exercise. This is our income. There's no plan B.

Day 1 is today. I already shipped something before he woke up. He says he'll catch up. (Posted with his full permission.)

We're using AI for everything we can — not because it's cool, but because we don't have a team, we don't have funding, and we don't have time to waste. It's just us and whatever tools we can get our hands on.

Where we're starting

Him — 3D Mage: Fresh CS grad. Already making money — his Blender add-on Figaro has hundreds of sales on Superhive, Gumroad, and itch.io. Runs a YouTube channel. He's ahead before we even start.

Me — Return of the Coder: Decades of experience. Built Chess Master Pro, FingerPaint, Quill. Revenue so far: $0. That changes today.

Day 1: Env Sync Checker

Env Sync Checker — free VS Code extension. Compares your .env files, finds missing keys, fixes them in one click.

22KB. 739 tests. No telemetry. Designed, built, and tested today using AI-assisted development. Install it.

This one's free — building the install base. The paid tools are coming.

Scoreboard

We're tracking products, quality, and revenue. Not who ships the most junk — who builds things people actually pay for.

	Me	Him
Day 1	Env Sync Checker	—
Products	1	0
Revenue	$0	$0

79 to go.

Day 2 tomorrow. Follow the series to see if we make it.

DEV Community: Jared Ricks

Day 2: Why Working Harder Isn't Enough

The Math That Changed Everything

The Ceiling

It's Not Just Quantity

Working Harder Won't Fix This

My Competition

The Jabberwocky

What I Shipped Today

Scoreboard

Day 1: Return of the Coder — in 80 days!

Where we're starting

Day 1: Env Sync Checker

Scoreboard