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

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

#131

Post by tannerc »

giarc wrote: post #130
Liquid_Fire wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m surprised anyone here thinks something like Snaplight would take more than an hour to build I think it would take me longer just to make the icon, having never done anything like that before. Think about all the skills you had previously built up that allowed you to make it in an hour. If someone lacks even one of them, they would never be able to do it so quickly.

Likely just used some stock icons or had previously designed them for another project and never used them.

I’m a full-time designer and designed everything in the app from scratch.

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

#132

Post by gmueckl »

megablast wrote: post #59
mister_hn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Load xcode, create a project, setup a repo can take 10 seconds. I just did it. Testing it takes longer. You can create a blank app and install it on a phone in 30 seconds. It really is that quick. Of course, writing it in 1 hour is a bit ridiculous. Did he have the icon images ready?

The article states that icons and other polish is excluded from that time and were done later.

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

#133

Post by jrochkind1 »

kranner wrote: post #46
rohan1024 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt. This translation doesn't seem to cover the familiar, deeper meaning of the passage. The term कर्म (karma) can refer both to work/action as well as to the principle of cause and effect (that the word 'karma' more commonly represents). My understanding is that it really talks about the purifying effect on the mind of doing you…

I got the implication of "do your duty without expectation of reward", and implications of cause/effect from rohan1024's off-the-cuff translation already.

But maybe I didn't get the implication of "job that rigid-caste-based society set out for you". Which of course probably seems less sensible/ethical to many of us modern people.

One of the things that has made the religious texts that have been treasured for thousands of years succesful is how they have such expanding/multitudinous possibilities of interpretation and directions of symbolism. And they usually have been understood differently by different people at different times (as a historical fact, even if the fundamentalists want to argue otherwise).

I find that a very interesting and thought-provoking passage, that has resonances with things in other religious/spiritual traditions (unsurprisingly especially some kinds of Buddhism), but I have no interest in the "your duty is exactly what 'society' tells you it is" part. I think we have a duty to ourselves/our neighbors/humanity/god/the divine, and expecting something in return will corrupt it (and possibly ruin the outcome), but it might not be quite what 'society' is telling you it is.

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

#134

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mister_hn wrote: post #19
_-___________-_ wrote: post #15

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'm supposing that he naturally made the project appstore ready because he knew what the requirements for that were, as in he did not write what he needed and then fixed it, he instead did not write anything that went out of guidelines.

As far as the other stuff, this reminds me of recruiters who send you a coding project that they say will take 2-3 hours that generally takes 4-6 if there isn't some major problem. The extra time is of course setting everything up choosing what dependencies you need etc, because every project is slightly different and you are unlikely to have everything that is needed for that one project. The actual coding is probably 2-3 hours.

So perhaps he already had everything his system needed, if so I expect it might have taken 1 hour to code (because he was very comfortable and knew exactly what he would need to do) and some minutes to make git repo, push code. Then add another hour to time compiling and submitting to app store.

If he knew what he needed to do in the code of course that was probably from thinking about it for weeks beforehand.

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

#135

Post by zhte415 »

lerxst00 wrote: post #26
liquidise wrote: post #2

> “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 Y…

That sounds very cool. Have you heard of bilibili.com? It's a video streaming website, but where comments are timestamped and scroll overlaid on the video at that timestamp, hugely entertaining, somewhat like sitting with 1000 videojockies at the same time. Mainly Chinese language, as it's a Chinese site. Worth having a look though, similar gist.

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

#136

Post by kranner »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #133
kranner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt. This translation doesn't seem to cover the familiar, deeper meaning of the passage. The term कर्म (karma) can refer both to work/action as well as to the principle of cause and effect (that the word 'karma' more commonly represents). My understanding is that it really talks about the purifying effect on the mind of doing you…

I got the implication of "do your duty without expectation of reward", and implications of cause/effect from rohan1024's off-the-cuff translation already. But maybe I didn't get the implication of "job that rigid-caste-based society set out for you". Which of course probably seems less sensible/ethical to many of us modern people. One of the things that has made the religious texts that have been treasured for thousa…

To be fair, the passages in question (this verse and the next few) do talk about equanimity towards results (very Buddhist) as service towards God. However, what God seems to want in the verses happens to be what would be good for society as well.

In modern contexts, the text is jarring in many ways. Arjuna's initial argument for not wanting to kill his cousins, uncles and grandfather on the other side are that if he kills them, their women would be led astray, i.e. procreate outside the clan (not clear if willfully or made to do so without male protection) which would lead to out-of-caste progeny being born and thus the destruction of the pure family blood line. The emphasis is on the illegitimate children being the problem, not that the women would be harmed.

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

#137

Post by yoz-y »

eps wrote: post #68
yoz-y wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that the author has better visibility to actual download numbers than App Annie or Sensor Tower. I assume they just got the number from the App Store connect. That is, apple highlights are massively more impactful that any other venue. My app had reviews in multiple publications and I average about 200 downloads per week, at around 4500 impressions. It got featured once in some list (in Thailand) and I got a…

Woah... no sales on 1 million impressions?! I understand the context, but still.

I went to check this actually and found out that what I told was inaccurate.

I got a million impression in a week, not per day. The app was featured for about a week and got ~100k impressions per day.

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

#139

Post by tannerc »

melling wrote: post #9
ladberg wrote: 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...

You should follow the link to the AppStore where it says: “This app is no longer supported by the developer“ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/snaplight-photo-highlighter/id... He probably got 10,000 downloads a week while he was featured on that page then dropped to almost zero. Millions of apps in the store means you won’t get much random traffic.

I only recently (as of a few weeks ago) stopped fully supporting my apps because I want to invest more time in other efforts.

I made a comment elsewhere here (and updated the article to state) that downloads currently are around 40 each week, with an occasional bubble of a few thousand when a blogger or news site re-discovers the app.

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

#140

Post by _cairn »

scarejunba wrote: post #18
vinhboy wrote: post #7

> All-in-all the project took me an hour to program That's amazing. I don't think I've ever written anything usable in an hour.

He's working in a space he has mastery. Like, look at this legend with his live note taking of Inkscape + Latex. I would have been like two orders of magnitude slower https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/

Unrelated to op, never seen this link before, super cool thanks for sharing.
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