I just released WebnoteHappy Lite 1.0 this week and what is interesting is that, at least for me, the post-release activity is more exhausting than the programming aspect.
I still haven’t put up my listing on VersionTracker because I’ve been answering a lot of emails and checking out the coverage WebnoteHappy Lite has gotten. I’m simply amazed and pleased that I got picked up by MacNN and also one of my favorite blogs, TUAW!
I find all this exhausting probably because I’m still learning a lot about how to do marketing and support properly. And I guess it is just less predictable. When I’m designing and coding, I sort of visualize some specific feature and how it fits into the integrated whole of the app. I try to figure out why a user would need to use it and how they might interact with it. Then I sketch it out along with some notes about how to implement it plus questions I need to answer. For example, what is the format for a bookmark file?
Then I go and research the questions and do a little prototype of the feature. Then once I’ve learned from the prototype, I go and implement it for real in the main app. All very methodical but also kind of magical in a way. Sometimes the code just seems to flow from my brain through my fingertips and into the PowerBook. I guess this is my key strength in all of this.
So anyways, back to the wider world, where things are not quite as logical as that. Or maybe they are and I just haven’t figured it out yet. I do know one thing… staying consistent, putting out your best effort every day even if its not perfect, day after day, seems to work. At least in the long run.