How to develop great software

December 3, 2013
Posted in Real World PHP

light bulb

Hi,

The point of this article: get people using your software ASAP!

Now some of the details …

The best teacher in any field is experience … and web programming is no exception! In the case of app creation though, it’s not just your experience as a coder that counts, but the experience of your users.

What 2000 users can teach you.

It’s amazing what getting software into users hands can do for you – revealing its’ flaws is one thing! Yes but then you can improve and refine … so it’s all good!

… I’ve been working on an interactive training system designed to help teachers teach web design and programming in a classroom setting, it’s called StudioWeb.

We first released an early version of StudioWeb (under another name) about 1.5yrs ago – we had a great response from users! Happy we were, but as more and more people jumped on, bugs revealed themselves. Besides the bugs, flaws in our basic thinking about HOW people would want to use StudioWeb appeared as well.

… You can sit in your office and dream up the ‘ultimate’ app, but you don’t really know if it’s any good until people use it.

Listening and refining is the key to great software!

franken-software

Biologist tell us that the most successful species are the most adaptable. As it is with flora and fauna, it is with bits and bytes … we nerds must learn to adapt our initial ideas to what the market demands.

Code should be light and flexible, be ready to trash functionality that people don’t want and be ready to add key features.

… Just don’t go crazy trying to add every little feature people request! Get consensus, otherwise you will end up with a Franken-software!

Thanks for reading.
Stefan Mischook
killerPHP.com

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