
Why I released a crappy todo app that no-one will ever use - rhubarbcustard
http://www.moreofless.co.uk/just-ship-it-like-yesterday/
======
orangethirty
A lot of the programmers/devs/engineers I talk to don't ship much code. They
just re-work some existing code base to add X or Y feature. These people don't
have a clue to what it takes to design something from the bottom up and hammer
it into something that resembles the original idea. Shipping code, which is my
favorite passtime, is just damn difficult. Not because the code itself is
hard. No. Its because we procrastinate, change our minds, focus on early
optimization, decide to to talk to others about it, and just do everything
expect shipping the damn thing.

That is why you shoul dno tcall your project crappy. Hell no. You went ahead
and shiped something. You started a project and saw it through. You know how
many people go through life without ever finishing something? A lot! But you
managed to do something. And to be honest, it is quite handy. Its is a nice
project that could be setup on an intranet so people would stop using email
attachments to keep track of their todos.

Keep hacking and shipping. Good luck.

 _edit_

Do you mind listing your email on your profile? I'd like to get in touch with
you.

~~~
aaronlow
Good for you, OP (site is down so I can't try your app at the moment).

orangethirty: as someone who is learning programming and trying to ship
something as well (but running into the difficulties you alluded to), your
post is very encouraging.

~~~
tim_moon
It's really encouraging to see someone ship something despite all the doubts.
I agree with parent and find this really encouraging.

I've built a similar prototype as well, but just kept it locked up because
honestly I was afraid to really put it out there since I shared the same
doubts.

So to get past that fear I'm just going to put it out there.
<http://app.iammako.com>

~~~
orangethirty
I went there and found a log in wall. Why do that if you want me to test it
out? Make the demo work without me having to register. Email me when you do
that and Ill poke around the app and give you some feedback. I liked the
background in the log in page, though.

~~~
tim_moon
Sorry about that. I made the app so that you can organize your todos into
projects (so more of a pm app), and invite others to work with you on
projects. What I could try and do is just set it up so you're logged into a
test account by default to poke around.

I'll let you know when I've taken care of that. Thanks for showing interest!

------
incision
Good.

I think it's an important milestone to build something end to end, no matter
how simple or imperfect.

On a related note, I was recently looking for a todo app for my phone and
found myself wondering how it is that there are so many (hundreds) apps, many
of which have their own ardent fans.

When there are so many competing apps and such parity between them, what's the
lure for using one over another?

In my case, I tried several and ended up using the one which felt most
intuitive to me - the app which allows me to record and organize things the
way I think of them with the least effort.

So...I wonder if the relatively low barrier of entry to creating sufficient
functionality in such an app has worked with the myriad, individual ways of
thinking about time and tasks to feed multiple many successful apps in the
same space.

If this is the case, how different would other spaces, which are currently
dominated by just a few players look and feel if the mechanics were easier to
implement?

~~~
vidarh
It's really hard to get a todo app right because the information you juggle is
so small, and individual user preferences are so vast that even competing in
efficiency with a text editor and a plain text file, or a paper and pen, is
hard.

So in one way the mechanics are trivial. In another way they're an immense
challenge.

------
rokhayakebe
A good friend with 20+ years of programming experience once told me "even
putting a form that collects basic information, and sends it as an email, is
hard." Shipping a software product, no matter how lightweight, is freaking
hard.

------
benrhughes
I felt the same way when I released my todo app
(<http://benrhughes.com/todotxt.net> \- a windows implementation for
<http://todotxt.com>). I mean, who's ever going to use this little PoS that I
wrote basically so I could update my task list at work? The last thing the
world needs is another todo app.

That was a bit over a year ago. Now I have ~500 active users and a half a
dozen of contributors. I get random "thanks" emails, the occasional donation,
and something nice to put on my resume. And the satisfaction of actually
shipping something.

------
TomAnthony
Site is down. Cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.mor...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.moreofless.co.uk/just-
ship-it-like-yesterday/&hl=en&pws=0&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

Link to the actual app (when it comes back up):

<http://www.moreofless.co.uk/todo>

~~~
rhubarbcustard
It's back up now, had some emergency firefighting to do - never expected to
get onto the HN front page, my poor old server never saw it coming!

------
JamesLeonis
I like hearing these stories of released apps. It's one reason I like the Show
HN threads. I enjoy reading about how they overcame the problems they
encountered. As somebody who is working on a project, it helps to distract me
from frustration and (hopefully) fix a problem I will stumble across in the
future.

------
alance
Well it would seem that the logical next step is going to be giving it a way
to provide permanence to the data. That generally means online storage, but
there might be other ways that are more in keeping with your offline
approach... or maybe you could give the user an easy to remember token that
they can use to fetch their todo list from another computer. I like the
shopping list aspect of it. I would focus my energy completely on the
usability side. Keep optimizing for convenience.

I've just launched a todo list sort of an app too, but it borrows heavily from
open source components, much hairier, different audience to yours I suspect
(alouy.com).

------
tommoor
Seems like you have the right attitude! Shipping a "crappy todo app" is more
than many will manage, best of luck with releasing more and more projects in
the future.

~~~
rhubarbcustard
Hey, thanks tommoor, appreciate the kind words.

------
qu4z-2
Well done!

I know the feeling of working on things and never shipping. I recently decided
to actually see a small program (vim plugin) all the way through from idea to
documented, installable release.

It's also highly bare-bones (around 10 lines of vimscript, although it started
as many more). But I don't want to get side-tracked talking about it. I guess
my real point is:

Congratulations on shipping. God knows it can be harder than it seems.

------
astrojams
I was expecting the first comment to be something like "because you are a
jackass" but then I realized that I'm not reading Reddit.

------
epaga
Congrats on shipping.

Looking at these comments, I can tell HN is doing its best to re-discover its
positive attitude towards "shippers" -- I kind of feel bad for anyone who
tried to post a "Show HN" a month ago, only to hear crickets in the comments
section. ;)

------
electic
To be honest, most people will never ship something by themselves their entire
career. Also, most people will ship something that they think is crappy but it
turns out it's the next big thing.

So, kudos for trying. Keep it up!

------
Xcelerate
Maybe I should have titled my app submission this morning "A crappy list of
good domains that no one will ever use". A provocative title seems to be good
for at least 28 more points than I got.

~~~
Xcelerate
(To add: My point is that sometimes "shipping" isn't enough -- you need
something else to grab attention).

~~~
rhubarbcustard
heh, totally agree. I'm totally shocked that I made it onto the first page.
Posting the todo to HN was just part of the "lets just ship this thing"
process and I got real lucky.

------
zio99
Hey Steve, great projects dude. You've got my upvote. Keep it up! I especially
loved Squareleaf and PicStrips. Even NotForest has a pretty sweet hypothesis
and design.

~~~
rhubarbcustard
Thanks! Readability kinda stole Notforest's thunder but I still use NF every
day, so damn useful.

------
pohungc
This is cool!

Feature creep: add some neat keyboard shortcuts for the power users ;)

~~~
RegEx
I love RTM for that reason.

------
allardschip
+1 for shipping code

