Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note

00:00:07 ◼   ► and iOS development, Apple, and the like.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer

00:00:13 ◼   ► based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:14 ◼   ► This is show number 84, and today is Friday, September 28th.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes,

00:00:21 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:23 ◼   ► All right, so this is actually going to be a pretty short episode.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I was getting into work today, and I was thinking about it,

00:00:26 ◼   ► And I was like, you know, I really just should just tie off the first part of the arc of building this weather app

00:00:31 ◼   ► with a bit of a celebration.

00:00:36 ◼   ► So last night, about 7, 8 o'clock, I submitted my weather app, Check the Weather, to the App Store.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And the reason I bring that up, A, because it's kind of exciting.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And hopefully you've been following along for the last month.

00:00:49 ◼   ► And if you haven't, that's kind of what I'm talking about over the last probably 10 episodes or so.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I've talked about the process I've been going through of building a weather app.

00:00:57 ◼   ► But the reason everyone wanted to do an episode, though, is because it struck me about how something I've said a couple of times,

00:01:00 ◼   ► I wanted to emphasize, it's the importance of celebrating shipping.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Because so much of the process of building something, it's easy to get wrapped up in the new show, the actual process.

00:01:13 ◼   ► It's like getting this performance tuned, making the icon look right, lining these pixels.

00:01:20 ◼   ► It's like you can get really deep in the weeds

00:01:22 ◼   ► and kind of lose sight of what you're doing,

00:01:23 ◼   ► that you're crafting something that you're trying

00:01:25 ◼   ► to send out into the world.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And so it's important, I think, though,

00:01:29 ◼   ► that you celebrate that when you actually finish it,

00:01:31 ◼   ► that when you finally let go, when you finally

00:01:33 ◼   ► sort of pry your hands off something and say,

00:01:35 ◼   ► you know, it's good enough.

00:01:37 ◼   ► I think it's great.

00:01:38 ◼   ► I think people are going to like it.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I think it's useful.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And you send it out into the world,

00:01:41 ◼   ► I think that's an important thing to celebrate,

00:01:43 ◼   ► to have a party about to do.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And so it's like last night, I was all ready,

00:01:49 ◼   ► I got my build set up and I went home.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's still sitting on my computer.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I got my family together.

00:01:58 ◼   ► We had a great dinner.

00:02:00 ◼   ► It's like my wife made an amazing dinner for me.

00:02:01 ◼   ► We had a little fancier than normal.

00:02:04 ◼   ► And then I got my family together and we celebrated

00:02:07 ◼   ► that I was sending this out into the world.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And actually I had my three-year-old son hit a button

00:02:14 ◼   ► in Xcode to actually say "Submit."

00:02:15 ◼   ► he really has any idea what's going on. But I wanted to make it a family thing. I want us to

00:02:18 ◼   ► celebrate that this project I've been working on is done and is now in the world. And I think that's

00:02:23 ◼   ► all been something that I've neglected to do at my own detriment before. That I'm not quite a

00:02:29 ◼   ► celebratory of these things that have become sort of, "Oh, it's just my job, whatever. I'm just doing

00:02:33 ◼   ► it." Because ultimately, that's demotivating. What you want to do is you want to make it exciting

00:02:41 ◼   ► when you ship because that makes it exciting when you make something.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And especially because the first phase, after something's released, is often a rough phase.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Like, you're putting it out and you're going to show the world something that you've been working on,

00:02:54 ◼   ► something that you've been excited about. And more likely than not, many people aren't going to like it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Many people aren't going to say, "Oh, I don't like it. I wish I did this. I wish I did that."

00:03:04 ◼   ► Maybe you should change it this way. And that can be kind of rough.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So when you're in this nice place where it's only happy thoughts.

00:03:12 ◼   ► It's waiting for review, it's out in the world, it's getting ready.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I can focus on some marketing things and getting that side of things ready.

00:03:21 ◼   ► But ultimately, my initial job is done.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And I've built something from, I created it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► The project didn't exist about a month ago.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Now it does.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Now it's something that's going to be hopefully seeing the light of day pretty soon.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And so that's kind of exciting.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And I just wanted to say that, to encourage everybody that that's the goal.

00:03:41 ◼   ► The goal is to ship.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And once you ship, to celebrate that as an accomplishment, that it's something that's

00:03:47 ◼   ► not nothing.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And if you think about it, I mean, there are a number of projects that never ship, that

00:03:53 ◼   ► for whatever reason, for some good, some bad.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But just because whenever you arrive at that place where you actually do ship, you want

00:04:01 ◼   ► a party, you want to have a good time hitting submit.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And then, of course, the funny thing with the app review

00:04:06 ◼   ► process is you submit.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Yay, all exciting.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And then you wait.

00:04:10 ◼   ► In my case, I'll be waiting until probably October 17th

00:04:12 ◼   ► is my hope.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And that's my launch date.

00:04:14 ◼   ► But it's just kind of a funny thing,

00:04:16 ◼   ► because you have all this excitement, build up, build up.

00:04:18 ◼   ► And then it's like binary has been

00:04:20 ◼   ► received waiting for review.

00:04:23 ◼   ► It's like, OK.

00:04:24 ◼   ► A little anticlimactic, maybe.

00:04:26 ◼   ► But anyway, that's all I really want to talk about today.

00:04:28 ◼   ► As I said, it's a pretty short episode.

00:04:31 ◼   ► thanks for indulging me for it. But I just wanted to say it's exciting when it happens. And if you're working on a project and you are going to get to that point where you ship, get your family together, get your friends together, whatever. Make a big deal about it. Like I had a friend who shipped an app recently. It's like I took him out to a steak dinner. Like, we made a big deal about it because it is a big deal. And it's the sort of like the journey rather than the destination is the important part. It wasn't necessarily that the app does well, the app does poorly. Like that's something I worry for a lot of people.

00:04:55 ◼   ► is the important part.

00:04:56 ◼   ► It wasn't necessarily that the app does well

00:04:58 ◼   ► or the app does poorly.

00:04:59 ◼   ► That's something I worry for another day.

00:05:01 ◼   ► The importance is that we've accomplished something.

00:05:04 ◼   ► That which was not in the store before is now here.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And that's, as a developer, that's what we celebrate.

00:05:09 ◼   ► That's what we are constantly striving towards.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And so it was exciting.

00:05:13 ◼   ► So that's it.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I hope you guys have a great weekend.

00:05:16 ◼   ► We write some good code, start some new projects.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I'll be talking a little bit about marketing probably

00:05:20 ◼   ► over the next couple of episodes,

00:05:23 ◼   ► and then switching back into normal, the normal flow of

00:05:27 ◼   ► show topics and things once this arc kind of wraps up a little bit

00:05:30 ◼   ► about the weather app. So if you're getting a little bored with the weather app, I'll probably be

00:05:34 ◼   ► moving back to some normal stuff.

00:05:36 ◼   ► As always though, if you have questions, comments, concerns, and as I'm heading into

00:05:39 ◼   ► that season, if you have thoughts about the show, things you'd like to hear about,

00:05:43 ◼   ► sometimes these things I've been wondering about, like, do I want to make the show

00:05:47 ◼   ► head in a direction that's just sort of this so developer focused, or do I want to ease it back a little bit,

00:05:52 ◼   ► make it a bit more general about just things I'm interested in,

00:05:57 ◼   ► Apple News or technology.

00:06:00 ◼   ► It's funny, I think about things that I enjoy, like drinking coffee

00:06:03 ◼   ► and how I make it, and hobbies or things.

00:06:07 ◼   ► It can take a lot of different directions.

00:06:10 ◼   ► So the best way is just give me some feedback.

00:06:12 ◼   ► It's always helpful.

00:06:13 ◼   ► You can email me.

00:06:14 ◼   ► My contact information is on the website, developingperspective.com.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Or you can get me on Twitter.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I'm @_davidsmith.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Otherwise, have a great weekend, happy coding, and I'll talk to you next week.