Write a successful piece of software

Building large websites is cool, but not as cool as getting emails from strangers saying how much they love your site – that’s what it’s all about :)

homepage + videos
toolboxapp.com

purpose
For seamless textures and photos

Finally, I have just released my first commercial program, which I believe is a success. I started working on this in 2004 and a good friend of mine happened to work on a similar project, so together we refined our ideas. I have been working full time on it for 1 year now.

I am working on a graphics program for Mac, that hopefully will turn into a successful piece of software. It has been on it’s way for ages, so I wonder if I can collect all the pieces so it becomes a single piece of software.

I have written a checklist about this.

http://opcoders.com/articles_about_business/feels_like_mac.html

I have put myself in the role of the user, by using other programs than my own. This is educational for me and I see what works and what doesn’t. Before I wrote it I thought that my own program were just fine, but after I realized that my program is rather poor :-(

Put your burden down has been updated to a brand new version, with much stronger skinnability (total redesign of layout code using divs and spans, prettifying with CSS)

It’s been pretty well visited, but I don’t think many people are using it. It felt good to rework it, though, and so I deem it a success.

I mark this goal as done mainly to clean out my list. This goal should take care of further progress of things like this.

There is software that needs to be written, and I want to be the one that writes it. Then I want people to actually like my software instead of just writing another one and discarding mine.

Really, what I meant when I put this goal on my list was that I wanted my software to be successful, as in well used. That’s pretty much the same as ‘Develop a useful and popular web application’

Now, though, I see the duality of this goal – and I prefer the other meaning: I want to write a piece of software that is successful in regards to the process of writing it.

I want to practice Don’t Repeat Yourself, and Do The Right Thing. I want to be smart and get things done. I want to not write stupid or ugly code, even if writing smart and readable code takes longer. I want to work based on a plan, and within a time schedule that is realistic. I want to work with smart people.

I want to create a good Web Administration Interface.

It has been an extremely rewarding thing to have created something used by so many. It’s also a bit daunting, since there’s a need to maintain it and improve it. I definitely need to get better at that.