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Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

tannerchristensen.com

21–30 of 197 posts

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#21

> “Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine.” There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Build something you will use. Solve a problem you have. Enjoy the process and accept the vulnerability that comes with shipping something to the world. Chances are good things will come of it.

Chances are NOT good that things will come of it. There's a million useless projects for every one post like this. There's a lot more work than just building it.

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange statement. It's a very simple app, which specific guidelines do you think should have taken significant time for him to write code that complies to? In my experience the guidelines are mostly common sense once you get used to the "Apple way", and are straightforward to comply with, especially if you're already familiar with them (OP had submitted several apps before).

still, claiming to hacking a mobile app together in one hour is something strange as well. Does the "hour of code" includes setting up project in the IDE, setting a repo, testing it, making it AppStore-ready? Options are: a. you have already the code somewhere (own sources, StackOverflow, GitHub, etc.) b. you are bluffing

My first app store submission was a challenge to go from idea to submitted app on one laptop battery charge (2-3 hours?) and was approved on the first try, so it’s definitely possible.

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#23

Interesting how the current version only has 5 ratings, but the author at the time says it received 10,000 per week. We would never know this and could never be able to assign validation to this app from the metrics we see in passing I find that interesting

“This app is no longer supported by the developer“

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#24
post #4

> As of March 2017, two years after launching Snaplight, it’s still going strong with about 10,000 downloads each week. Wow. I've been hearing for years that the gold rush of 99 cent apps on the App Store was done for, but this kinda gives me hope. I might get around to finally finishing any app I've worked on...

I was shocked seeing 10,000 downloads per week for a paid app but it appears to be free now and “no longer supported by the developer”.

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#26

> “Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine.” There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Build something you will use. Solve a problem you have. Enjoy the process and accept the vulnerability that comes with shipping something to the world. Chances are good things will come of it.

I recently had a similar experience: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I like reading through the comments. Often, comments quote specific timestamps from the video and I would find it a pain to keep scrolling between the comment section at the bottom of the page and the video at the top and then find the specific time in the video that the comment was talking about.

So, I created a Chrome extension that surfaces YouTube comments that have timestamps right below the video, around the time that the comment contains. And, then disappears it after a few seconds.

It was fun to make and in the end, it solved a very specific problem that I was facing.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed-comm...

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange statement. It's a very simple app, which specific guidelines do you think should have taken significant time for him to write code that complies to? In my experience the guidelines are mostly common sense once you get used to the "Apple way", and are straightforward to comply with, especially if you're already familiar with them (OP had submitted several apps before).

still, claiming to hacking a mobile app together in one hour is something strange as well. Does the "hour of code" includes setting up project in the IDE, setting a repo, testing it, making it AppStore-ready? Options are: a. you have already the code somewhere (own sources, StackOverflow, GitHub, etc.) b. you are bluffing

I have no experience with iOS development but I do have in Android, and in Android it is quite possible and even uneventful to put together an application that allows users to navigate through half a dozen activities and fragments in about an hour of work.

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#28

> “Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine.” There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Build something you will use. Solve a problem you have. Enjoy the process and accept the vulnerability that comes with shipping something to the world. Chances are good things will come of it.

That's what Bhagvad Gita says as well. Please note these are not the exact words but this is how I remember them

कर्म करो फल की अपेक्षा मत करो जब तुम फल की अपेक्षा रखोगे तुम्हारा कर्म दूषित होगा

Translation:

Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt.

Re: Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange statement. It's a very simple app, which specific guidelines do you think should have taken significant time for him to write code that complies to? In my experience the guidelines are mostly common sense once you get used to the "Apple way", and are straightforward to comply with, especially if you're already familiar with them (OP had submitted several apps before).

still, claiming to hacking a mobile app together in one hour is something strange as well. Does the "hour of code" includes setting up project in the IDE, setting a repo, testing it, making it AppStore-ready? Options are: a. you have already the code somewhere (own sources, StackOverflow, GitHub, etc.) b. you are bluffing

Setting up a project in the IDE takes maybe a couple minuites at worst.

you wouldn't bother making a repo for something like this. Testing is done while programming, and the process of putting it on the app store presumably wasn't counted as 'programming'

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