Category: English

I’ve been writing software for over a decade now and I think I’ve established a minimal, yet very effective, set of rules for writing software:

Amit’s rules for writing software

1. Make the users happy.
2. Allow for known future modifications.

Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But, much like code, the brevity of these rules says nothing about what they encapsulate.

The first rule requires you to make the users happy. And by “happy” I mean make the users think your software is worth the time, money and effort they invested in order to use it. Some things are hidden in this rule – shipping on time, for example, is something that makes users happy. But sometimes achieving this goal requires you to make compromises and write code that isn’t according to your standards. Maybe you had to make an ugly shortcut, duplicate code, a hack, whatever. As long as the users are happy it’s OK to cut corners but…

The second rule says you should allow for known future modifications. That’s where all of your education, experience and religious pursuit of perfect code come into play. To make software future-proof you have to write good software, which practically disallows the aforementioned hacks from rule #1.

A delicate balance exists between the rules. Making users happy will presumably allow for a great first version but you might end up with unmaintainable software. On the other hand, write code without compromise and you may never ship. If you manage to write non-compromising software that your users are happy with, kudos to you.

I never could.

Ah, a moment of pride. A day after posting Dindy’s slow sales progress on my previous post 13 new users bought it in just 2 days, increasing sales by almost 50%. At first I thought it was because I posted an update to the market but then I realized that, again, someone gave Dindy a positive rating and/or review. So the current tally is 45 total installations with 33 active installs (73% retention rate.)

Dindy now has five 5-star ratings (the highest rating for an app) and so it has a perfect 5-star score in the market. The reviews are also very positive:

Miguel:
It works, so far so good. Not for everyone. Helpful for students, busy people, productive folks and for those that just wanna sleep.

This is the first reviewer that gave Dindy its first sales boost. Miguel was very kind to positively review Dindy the day after I posted about Dindy in a forum. I thanked him for that.

Jason:
I really like this app and the Dev is super quick with a response to feedback. Multiple profiles can be used and its simple to set up!

Jason has contacted me with regards to an issue he had with Dindy on his phone and he refers to the fact that I answered his email as soon as I saw his message. It’s very nice of him to give Dindy (and me) this review.

corina:
Wonderful! Works like a charm!

Thanks! Hopefully I’ll be able to continue providing people with software they’re happy with, which has been my goal to begin with.

I haven’t made any further attempts to market Dindy and the sales have dropped a little bit – there’s a new user every 3-4 days. Google’s publisher statistics tell me that 29 people have downloaded Dindy and there are 18 active installs, which account for 62% of the downloads. From what I read this is a pretty normal retention rate.

These numbers provided by Google do not include two users whose payment has been declined and one person I refunded. I wonder what happens when your payment is declined – do you get to keep the application installed? If not, how is this enforced?

T-Mobile customers in the US can now purchase applications using their monthly bill. It remains to be seen whether this will increase the general sales of apps, and specifically Dindy’s.