[Luis:] As promised, here is part 2 of Brian Cooke’s take on The Life.

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[Brian:]

Get more Support

I had only been working on rooVid for a few days when I came across Luis’ WebnoteHappy Lite public beta. I was the perfect customer for WebnoteHappy and I realized that quickly. After playing with the beta for an hour or two I had some bugs to report, some ideas and also wanted to let the developer know that I appreciated the app. So I sent Luis a note and through this a friendship was formed. I didn’t actively plan on forming this friendship, it just happened.

Lesson #4: Befriend or somehow gain access to a fellow Mac dev, their brains are good for picking. Luis has been great about answering whatever questions I run into (payment systems, applescript…) as well as providing excellent criticism on some UI prototypes.

Get to Work but Keep Learning
rooVid Lite isn’t all too complex, but I had to continue to learn a lot. Here’s some advice on working on a project while continuing to learn:

  • Use source control. Subversion is the new cvs.
  • Check-in often. I try to check-in after each session with a comment describing what I’ve accomplished.
  • Delving into something new? Create a new project and play with whatever it is new, in there. This prevents from creating a mess of your real work. An example would be adding AppleScript support to your app.
  • If you don’t want to create another project, at least create a branch and make a mess in there.
  • Make sure the class you’re about to write doesn’t already exist. A lot of what you’ll need is already provided for you by Apple. Search through developer.apple.com first.
  • Do your homework. The web is full of information, I have a cocoa rollyo I use that searches a handful of sites at once. If that fails, I head to google.
  • If you fail at your homework, shelf the problem and come back later. Often times you’ll run into a solution along the way.
  • If you fail to find a solution along the way, ask. Find the appropriate mailing list and clearly explain your problem and the work you’ve done trying to solve it. So far I’m one for one on asking a question to a mailing list and getting the answer I needed.

Keep Chugging
I procrastinate. I rarely finish the things I start. Here are some motivational tips that helped me finish rooVid Lite (nothing here is new):

  • Need your product. If you need it, it’s a lot easier to kick yourself into gear and work through those hard times.
  • Break large tasks into smaller tasks and monitor your progress. Every time I finished a tiny task I entered a note in iCal for that day. I find it encouraging to look back through the week and see all that I had done. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but now that the shareware version of rooVid looms over my head I imagine I’ll get back into this.
  • Can’t write code? Think. One of my biggest problems is that when I can’t bring myself to work on rooVid I end up surfing the web or reading news I don’t really care about. Instead, try to take some of that time and put it towards thinking, write something down, draw your UI on paper again. Do something that tricks you into thinking you’ve accomplished something.

Have Fun
If this is what you’re supposed to be doing with your time, you’ll be enjoying it, a lot. Well, at least most of the time.

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[Luis:] Also, if you missed it, here is Brian Cooke’s Take on the Life – Part 1. I’ll be on the lookout to find other Mac Indies to share their unique perspectives in the future.