Shipping requires working on the stuff you aren't good at. For me that is UI: graphics, interaction, instruction.
Taboo has received 109 reviews on addons.mozilla.org with an average of 5 stars. But there is the occasional 3 (or lower) star review:
It's so ugly... style it up a bit and I'd use it.
3 stars, by morbandit on February 9, 2009
Thomas R. Koll responded to "If you haven't shipped it you haven't done anything" that by doing you are learning. I agree and do many experiments which haven't been pushed into the world. The argument for shipping was that I had created things of value that while not perfect were ready. As well, the process of shipping would require me to spend time on aspects that users really need (eg, how do I find, install and use the thing).
Things that are obvious to me are not always obvious to even the early adapters I serve. When Yosh and I released s3:// for firefox I assumed that the name with the description of Access Amazon S3 inside Firefox by using urls like s3://bucket/key would be enough instruction. To those who haven't worked in Mozilla code for years, the additional of protocol doesn't imply to just use the URL bar to access S3.
All of which is a long way of saying that UI/interaction quality is just as important as code quality. Users will choose the product with lower quality code that has a better UI. Shipping makes you to address these issues instead of ignoring them while hiding in your editor working on code.
