Category: Code

Northern Ireland is currently suffering a massive skills gap. Every major IT employer in Northern Ireland is crying out for more skilled personnel. Some of them are wanting graduates, others are just wanting programmers who know what they are doing.

That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of programmers, but we have very few great programmers. And we spend far too much time putting students through degrees where they can have their enthusiasm for life removed, module by module. Our programmers lack important skills – social skills, management skills and business skills. More importantly, for a global economy, customer skills.

Earlier this month, when questioning why an error occurred in some software, the developer first accused me of doing something stupid and when I replied this was not the case, a co-developer suggested another stupid thing. There seemed to be some sort of arrogant assumption that I, having been on the Internet for 20 years, would have clicked buttons randomly while trying to submit a form. I resented the implication because the problem was undoubtedly their code. But a blind-spot in their ability to deal with a customer left me feeling annoyed, under-serviced and resentful of the entire exchange. Add to that my general lack of satisfaction with customer-unfriendly solutions.

So, for the benefit of customers everywhere, keep in mind that the customer might be right, that they might not be idiots and that, just maybe, your code is wrong.

Ian Robinson wrote:

Like in NaNoWriMo you are not going to produce an app that will make you a fortune, or maybe even make it to the App Store. But what it might give you is the confidence that you can take a concept for an App from design, through to running on your device (or in a simulator). This will hopefully show you that it is possible for you to do App development. Even if it’s just as a hobby and for fun. And if your App is useful you can spend time over the next few months maybe refining it and releasing it for others to use.

Ian also has a heap of starter links. And I have a truckload of books.

More important than a promise to anyone else is a promise to yourself. I’m going to do my best to work on this for an hour from 8 pm to 9 pm every night in December, permitting breaks for events, family and Christmas.

I’m entering it in my calendar right now. Who’s up for it?

I’d be interested in comments here as some conversation around the office was regarding how much it takes to start a product-based software startup. This is interesting to me because I’ve hired three software developers during my time in Mac-Sys and Infurious had at least one software developer in-house.

Our estimate was a development team of 3-4 people for a minimum of two years would mean probably half a million pounds when you add travel, marketing, overheads.

This assumption was based on 4 people (presumably 3 developers, 1 designer), earning mid-range to low-end salaries (£25,000 per annum) probably because they have some sort of equity stake.

This is assuming you’re not a service company – you’re not paying salaries by doing development for other people.

And then there’s the assumption that it’ll take you a year to build it and the second year you’re building product #2 and supporting product #1 with bug fixes and updates.