Here’s the very first program I ever wrote in my life:
10 PRINT "Vova"
The second program already asked what my name was, then asked for my year of birth, and then printed on the screen:
Privet, Vova! Tebe 8 let.
I retyped both of these programs from a children’s textbook.
Once the principle became clear — that you can write absolutely anything on a computer — the third program was no longer from a book. It was from my head. Ever since then, different app ideas have constantly been coming into my head. Some ideas died in my head, some died in a special little notebook, and some ideas drag out their miserable existence as apps published in the App Store.
I don’t know a single programmer who doesn’t understand the boundlessness of their capabilities, and who hasn’t had some app ideas come into their head. Some even find the time and patience to write an app and put it in the App Store.
But then why don’t we see tens of thousands of successful programmers around us who have built a business on this? Because programmer ≠ businessman. One of the differences can be illustrated with the following dialogue:
— Vova, look, I made a cool app.
— Mm, cool, yeah, useful. But this bit here is done awkwardly; it needs to be like this and this.
— Nah, you don’t get it! It’s a feature! That’s how it’s supposed to be!
— Well, I don’t know, I didn’t understand how it worked on the first try, and I’m constantly suffering when I tap the wrong place on the screen...
— That’s how it’s supposed to be; in the UITableViewDelegate delegate method, when the argument value is nonzero...
— Hey, what difference do the parameters make? It’s still inconvenient to use...
— GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU ASSHOLE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT PROGRAMMING!!!1
For programmers, showing off their programming knowledge is like rich kids bragging about a new expensive phone or expensive boutique clothes. I.e., what I meant to say is that it’s the only way to stand out in some way, to hide their inferiority complex.
When programmers shove their ego deeper down and start listening carefully to their users, that’s when entrepreneurial happiness will come to them.