The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

what software to write

i have plenty of time and i want to write some application but i really do not have any idea what to write. i do not want to copy just something, i do not want a next time tracking tool.

any ideas?

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Do you want to write something to sell, to give away, for yourself or for others?

If you can't think of anything then whats given you the desire to write something.

Fothy
Sunday, April 18, 2004

http://www.lazyweb.org/

Sunday, April 18, 2004

A good HTML editor as an ActiveX control. Joel could be your first customer :-)

Fred
Sunday, April 18, 2004

HTML editor component that produces XHTML 1.0 strict

Eric Debois
Sunday, April 18, 2004

i have a desire because i do love programming, and want to solve problems. obviously i want to sell it but that's not the main point.

Sunday, April 18, 2004

> A good HTML editor as an ActiveX control.

Like this one? http://softpae.dsidata.sk/_products/xeditor.exe
Competition is good. I keep forgetting :)

TomA
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Cool :-) And @ E99, not too expensive. I'll give it a shot. Thx

Fred
Sunday, April 18, 2004

I'm sure there's something in here you could help with. And you'll be working with experts who will give good advice.

http://sourceforge.net/

Tom H
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Make www.swig.org even easier to use. Like read in a directory of C code and automatically create an interface and module.

Tom Vu
Sunday, April 18, 2004

I have a question about this, there are thousands of custom applications out there being written at this very minute. Why can't there be a Starbucks of custom software? You just go to a local street corner, ask for a database-backed simple software backing to your company's database (or the datastore webservices of your choice). Like I need to do a quick poll of people's feeling about the new product line for this year and any previous years. So I would go to This Softbucks and get a rep who will break it down to two phases (1. Set up experiment, execute 2. Analytics)... and drop down USD$1,500 and come back for a few more sessions down the line.

I mean it's all template ware now days. Sure for some projects you have to take the pain of hooking it up with strange databases or hard to deal with devices like the Pilot but it's seems possible.

Li-fan Chen
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Sure! And while we're at it, why don't we just cure world hunger, democratize the Iraqis' and put a man on the planet Mars!

I mean it's all easy once you forget about all forms of reality!

Anon-y-mous Cow-ard
Sunday, April 18, 2004

I'd settle for software for reading name and emails from the top 50 contact management/ERP/CRM packages out there.

Edward
Sunday, April 18, 2004

"I mean it's all template ware now days. Sure for some projects you have to take the pain of hooking it up with strange databases or hard to deal with devices like the Pilot but it's seems possible. "

The challenge in programming (especially today) is not the programming, it is accurately defining the problem.

Defining the problem has always been the hard part, but 20 years ago it was eclipsed by the challenge of programming.

And the problem is that the custome often has not thought through the problem, on the solution. That's why every company creates their own CRM software, thier own database software, etc. You've got legions of programmers working on INTERNAL company apps, all solving the same basic problems (billing, tracking inventory, etc.) but with different solutions.

Mr. Analogy
Sunday, April 18, 2004

> You've got legions of programmers working on INTERNAL
> company apps, all solving the same basic problems
> (billing, tracking inventory, etc.) but with different
> solutions.

There is a reason (at least as far as I can tell) for having legions of programmers solving the same problem.

Corporate America is out there to make money. To make money, they need customers. The goal is to get customers and keep them somehow. One of the ways to get customers is to be the first to offer something, and once you get the customers, one of the ways to keep them is to make sure what you give them is one of a kind so that down the road, if they see a better product, they will have a hard time switching... Therefore, every company creates its own product line with its own proprietary stuff even if they are solving the same problem. For example cell phone companies are a good example. On the other hand, telephone companies are not.

Sometimes companies decide to merge their ways of doing things, so they create standards. This is good for the customers, but bad for the companies since now they have to find ways to keep customers other than making it hard for them to switch.

Of course, there is also a reason why they do this. Sometimes the heavyweight companies see that the cut-throat competition is just too destructive. In order to stop the massacre and to prevent the little companies from winning over customers while the big guys fight with each other, the industry behemoths say "OK, let's just at least agree on the protocol, and we'll compete on other things like price and feature set". Note that, this is not how every protocol/standard is created, but some are created for this reason.

As long as the goal of companies is to make money, there will be zillions of products trying to solve the same problem and get your money in return. If the goal was to solve a problem in the best possible way and in a uniform fashion, then these companies would have to put their heads together and collaborate. That, however, means that they would have to stop dreaming about money, which will not happen any time soon.

That's how I see it, and I don't see SoftBucks popping up any time soon. Even if a SoftBucks did pop up somewhere, it will create competition which will result in SoftBucks-like companies creating the same exact problem unless the original SoftBucks somehow created standards that everyone else agrees to follow.

entell
Monday, April 19, 2004

"...there are thousands of custom applications out there being written at this very minute. Why can't there be a Starbucks of custom software?"

There is.

www.rentacoder.com

Kyralessa
Monday, April 19, 2004

I'd like a decent GUI for creating and editing Apache Ant build files. Get to it.

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Monday, April 19, 2004

There is, it's called IDEA

:)

Rhys Keepence
Monday, April 19, 2004

If you want to make it commercial then don't write anything for developers. The market for IDE's, editor's and components is saturated with products.

Why don't you think about areas of experience you have in your life outside of IT? If you have an interest in photography for instance think about what software you could write which would be useful to photographers. What are your interest outside of IT?

Tony Edgecombe (www.frogmorecs.com)
Monday, April 19, 2004

Sorry, I meant a decent, FREE tool!

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Monday, April 19, 2004

Re Cell phone companies. It isn't that they can't interoperate - its that they wont!

Most of the world runs GSM. Most of the rest runs CDMA. The GSM operates can all interwork (they do in Europe and the US to a certain extent) - I can use my UK GSM phone all across Europe, and in the US too if I have the right sort of phone (the US uses a different band to Europe). My best knowledge is that CDMA interoperates in much the same way.

The sad truth is that in the US mobile phone operators have failed to interwork because they have either decided that there is no business benefit, or they can't see it.

Regards,
treefrog

treefrog
Monday, April 19, 2004

You're bored you say? Ok then, here are a couple of things I need:

Platform: Pocket PC
Source: Win32

1. A better (aka. more efficient) replacement for the Text Edit control that can handle more then 32000 chars.

2. A replacemant for a better File Open/Save dialog that allows the user to select directories *outside* of /My Documents path.

Enjoy.

Call me when you're done. ;)

sedwo
Monday, April 19, 2004

>I'd like a decent GUI for creating and editing Apache Ant >build files.

Tomcat too.

son of parnas
Monday, April 19, 2004