Courseway is under way at last. Still no public site, you’ll have to be patient for that. I’ve got the paper designs well under way and the rails project started. Some html mockups next. How exciting.
Why am I writing this system?
According to the people who like to inform us on how to write web apps, my best chance at success is to create something to ‘scratch an itch’. ie Write an app that I need. Unfortunately, being an IT bloke, that covers pretty much all the apps that are currently written and popular. It makes sense – programmers are the ones who can write apps, so they’ve gone and scratched all the itches they have already. Project management systems, bug tracking systems, contact systems, life organisation systems etc. So, I’m going to break the first rule and write an app for other people! Shock horror.
More generally, why am I writing a web app?
This is the main question. The name of this new venture is tidyapps. I called it that because I’ve been writing systems for clients for about 10 years now, some of the systems started out as being well thought out, cleanly designed systems, but then over the years, due to never ending requests, they’ve become messy bloated things. It’s pretty much an unavoidable side effect of bespoke application development. I don’t know how to avoid it.
So, this is why I want to write my own apps – to avoid client requests. That way I’ll be able to keep my apps tidy, and as a result hopefully make my life less stressful! Also, but maybe I’m taking this too far now, I’ll be able to make the lives of my users less stressful too by providing them with tidyapps!
