It's Always Easier Looking In.
written by Allan on July 29, 2010
Everyone is guilty of looking at an app and saying "Wow that would be easy to build". What we don't see are the 1st release, the revisions, the decisions and the steps it took to mature the app to that state. We especially don't see the sacrifice the builders took to create that app, how many hours did they NOT spend playing with their kids while they were building that app. How many long nights did they put in?
It's easy to judge, easy to say someone got lucky and certainly easier to call someone gifted than to follow their lead and put in the sacrifice to build something special. It's much easier to call someone lucky then to bust your ass when the outcome is questionable.
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About Allan
Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
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7 Comments
very well said Sir. Now time to rearrange the shop for the 1,000,000th time to make it flow a bit better.
Very true! No one ever truely knows the “behind the scenes” work that goes into any production.
Very well said, I am also experiencing this with my app as I try to build out the next big feature. Seems easy, but it is really really hard. The revisions take time, the design takes time, the infrastructure takes time, and the marketing takes a crazy amount of time.
Good thoughts.
I think that is why people are so bad at estimating. They think about the finished product and say “that will be easy to build”. They don’t think about the fact that the finished product will end up being a good bit different than first envisioned and the steps that will be necessary to take it from a vision to a final product that make sense in the real word. Not to mention all the other thing you have to do besides actually building it (marketing, support, etc.).
The same is true for design. It’s very easy to look at a finished work and say “I could reproduce that.” The real struggle is in the maturation process of the concept/design. A successful project typically has a good chunk of time devoted to failed ideas.
I actually think that the simpliest apps can be hardest to design. I takes a lot of thinking and trying to come up with something almost perfect :)
Applications are a lot like icebergs (I used my Forrest Gump voice there). Only a fraction of the iceberg is actually visible above water, so it looks tiny at first glance, but go below the depths and you realize how enormous it really is. Google immediately comes to mind; most people experience a two page site, basically a text box and a list of results.