How Two Shoe Enthusiasts With No Programming Experience Built An iPhone App | Hacker News Reader

How Two Shoe Enthusiasts With No Programming Experience Built An iPhone App

beyondthepedway.com

76 pointstimjahn37 comments

Not to take anything away from these guys—they obviously have a great amount of drive, intelligence, vision, and focus—but I'm a little perturbed by the utter amazement of the host. 'Who actually makes their own iPhone app?' I wouldn't trust anybody who apparently travels in the tech/startup community who finds actual technical know-how so completely unnecessary (if not alien) to the effective tech entrepreneur.

I too found the interviewers amazement a little odd...

> If you’re not a programmer to learn programming, that’s just, that’s beyond what most people are capable of.

Am I missing something? Were you guys all born knowing how to program?

They're saying most people aren't capable of, which might be true, due to various factors such as intelligence and desire.

To me, not necessary a matter of being capable, but rather a matter of wanting to learn.

iPhone apps in Objective C are hard. Many people teach themselves to program, but usually it's done incrementally, in much simpler environments. Building a working, native iPhone app as the first program you ever wrote is indeed pretty amazing.

Hey there, I'm the crazy host. :)

The reason I was so "amazed" is that I'm a programmer/developer myself, so I know the mindset and skill it takes to like to hack and solve programmatic problems.

Many people who aren't developers/programmers (like the founders of Sole Search) don't learn how to program - they usually just find somebody who does and have them handle the actual building of the app.

To me, it's pretty cool that these guys chose to learn themselves rather than just outsource.

Most people that got in to programming outside of going through university got in to it to 'build something', I think I know more of those than I know of the ones that pursued 'programming' as a career.

Exactly. It's a mindset. Programmers think much differently than non-programmers.

> Programmers think much differently than non-programmers.

What, you mean like mathematicians and lawyers and engineers and many others besides?

Really, programmers aren't the only people capable of logical thinking or 'stepwise refinement'.

That's true, the best C programmer I personally know is an electrical engineer by profession.

This is very targeted programming. It is not like they picked up enough skills to be hired as a developer at Facebook or Google. As a programmer who went to a good school, I spent (and still spend) a lot of time studying things these guys don't give a crap about.

They probably don't know much about software engineering practices, security vulnerabilities, esoteric editors and dev tools, the details of networking, regular expressions, profiling or O-notation, design patterns, discrete math, etc.

They don't really have to know that stuff. They can just focus on iOS (which nicely abstracts a lot of things) and throw themselves into a project until it gets done. It is like learning enough about your car so you can fix and maintain it. You don't have to become an expert, you're not opening a shop.

Now they ceartainly put a ton of work into this, but I imagine they learned the minimum necessary to be effective. Of course, they'll probably have a bumpier road in the future than a seasoned developer would. But they seem scrappy enough to handle it. :)

Related story: I had a friend with zero programming exprience who did this with the LAMP stack since he had an idea for a website. His code was atrocious. As he learned a little more he would scrap and rewrite huge sections of his software. He'd stay up most of the night and work on the simplest parts for days. But he got shit done, and it worked well.

Their company name is "Perseverer" which is persevere in French.

I don't think it's a mere coincidence that the pair of zero programming experience programmers managed to push out a iphone app downloaded 20,000 times, with a company name like that. :)

In a similar vein- I thought the interview really showed how much they like each other and worked well together. They have been friends for years, been struggling together throughout, and even finish each others sentences. Helps show how they had the energy to get it done, and also the logic of funding teams with great relationships.

I agree. :)

I actually used version 1.0 of the SoleSearch app because I love Puma shoes. From what I recall, the app was average, the usability was a little below average. It wasn't a stellar app but the fact that it actually worked and did not crash that much was nice. The important thing to note is that the reviews on the 1.0 app were extremely positive - which highlights the power of making an app for a niche market, to find the right fit for an app. After downloading the app, I was disappointed because my expectations were high - but apparently if you are a traveling sneakerhead - and have heard of Bodega in Boston - this app is it.

Now to learn that these two developers were not coders but shoe enthusiasts. Pretty amazing.

That is really cool. I only read the transcript so maybe I missed it but I wish they talked more about the technical aspect of developing the app. Learning Objective C isn't the easiest thing in the world especially with no programming experience.

That's a good point. Personally, I usually think people aren't interested in the real nitty gritty technical details but I bet some folks are.

Thanks for the feedback and for watching!

Fantastic interview, but I see an uncanny resemblance to http://www.mixergy.com. What's up with that?

Thanks for the kind words about the interview. I'm a huge fan of Mixery and the style of interviews Andrew Warner conducts.

I'm definitely not trying to compete with him or draw folks away from the outstanding work he's doing. Rather, I'm trying to add on to the idea by chatting with folks who haven't necessarily hit it big yet, sold their company, and/or made a large sum of money - I want to chat with the creative entrepreneurs who are still climbing their mountain.

Short answer: I love Andrew and Mixergy and hope to one day be as amazing of an interviewer as he is.

Thanks for watching!

Tim, for what it's worth, I've gotten links to your site from a few people who said your site seems "overly inspired" by Mixergy.

When I started out, I found myself unconsciously imitating Gary Vaynerchuk. That's why you'll hear my older videos start with an over the top "HEY EVERYONE IT'S ANDREW WARNER..." Listening back, I can understand why it was so unnerving to my audience. They noticed that I was trying to imitate, instead of working to find my own voice.

Before you can master something you have to get the basic skills down. One way to look at this is you've developed a very effective style which others can use as the starting point, initially through imitation, to help them get to a place where they can start adding their own style to the mix.

So what's your stand on this kind of inspiration? Do you condone it? Encourage it?

Hi, How about you add some of your own flair to the site? Everything about the site screams mixergy and andrew. Except its you interviewing. Just because andrew seems to have no issues doesnt mean you can con and confuse visitors. Sorry about the harsh review but this is blatant copying. Other than that, I agree that more interviews from more sources is always welcome.

What's wrong with that? Nobody owns an interviewing style.

I was actually referring to the style/design/layout of the site more so than the interviewing style. The style of interviews is probably the most differentiating factor between the two sites, IMO.

I happen to own the domains solesearch.com and solesearch.net and used to use the .com as a footwear auction marketplace (bigger niche than most think). Still toying with rejuvenating the idea. I've never received any contact from them about acquiring domain. They can't be happy with sole-search.net right?

I just googled for 'solesearch'. The top result was sole-search.net.

How happy are you with that?

I imagine most of their customers search for it in the app store/marketplace. Not having the .com probably isn't a huge deal for them.

I have absolutely no feeling, as they should be the top search in google. I do not use the .com or the .net at the moment, like I pointed out. I was just asking if they are a business called SoleSearch, why settle for the domain sole-search.net? It's fairly easy to come into contact with the owner of domains if they are not available.

I'm sure all of their customers find it in the app store and that's why they've never worried about it. But take a successful app like angry birds for example. If I go to angrybirds.com, it takes you to their shop where they earn additional streams of revenue. If these guys want to create something special and "be bought out by yahoo for a billion", in my opinion they need to offer something more to a customer than just the name, address and phone number of a sneaker store. It's all stuff I can do myself by using a free app like google maps.

As I do understand the point your are trying to make. I don't think these guys are necessarily making the website their top priority. They are clearly tapping into new technology (iPhone & Androids) when was the last time you saw someone walking around with their laptop opened up and searching the web. I'm guessing a while. Nowadays everyone is using apps on their phones and/or iPods to keep up, be it facebook, online banking, almost anything can be done through an app nowadays. Another thing you mentioned you said you can do all of these things on google maps, but to be honest you can't they are targeting true "sneakerheads" who enjoy the art of collecting one-of-a-kind footwear not your average sketchers. There are a lot of people all around the world who enjoy the art of collecting unique footwear, which for the most part can be done at a boutique. It's not like going on google maps and searching for the nearest Footlooker, but independent boutique owners who might not necessarily get the coverage on google maps. These guys have built relationships with these boutiques worldwide, and they know these boutiques. Try going on google maps and search for a unique sneaker boutique in Johannesburg, South Africa and let's see how many results you'll get. This is an app for the true sneaker collector who can say "I picked these up when I was in London, and they're one of kind" not for the person looking to replace their running shoes.

They mentioned that at some point, they hired professional developers to upgrade / update the app. I think this point was glossed over. When did they hire that additional developer? Why did they hire that developer if they didn't need him/her to begin with? And what were the quality / functional differences before and after the update? Could have used more discussion there.

That is one area I could have expanded upon.

The developers they hired were working on the Android version of the app and I believe at that point, they had a little more money they could actually put toward hiring a developer.

That's not how it's comes across in the interview (and transcript). From the transcript at: http://www.beyondthepedway.com/sole-search-iphone-interview#...

"...We made some mistakes. And it wasn’t perfect. We got done what were able to get done and did the jest of what we wanted to do. And then from there once we got some downloads, we got some money, we had an update done, which was done by some professionals. So yeah."

That seems to imply that they had replaced the original iPhone app that they built with one that a professional built. You might be right, but since it wasn't explored, it could most likely be what was implied above.

Ah, miscommunication here. I was referring to a different part of the interview with my comment above. Sorry.

The video doesn't say much about what the app does exactly, but it sounds like they targeted a really good niche. Who knew an app for finding shoe boutiques would have so much demand?

My thoughts exactly!

Yes; this is awesome.

I don't want to discredit anybody, but we (well, I) have no clue what was the app like. From the sound of it, it could have been a text box filled with names and addresses on a white background, and this can be achieved by dragging and dropping in the Interface Builder.

Even if that is the case, there still is a point. Developing for iOS (or OS X for that sake) has been made easy. Just fire up Xcode and start typing. Contrary to Android platform a year or a two ago (last time when I checked it out), many more clicks and bits were needed before actual code could be written.

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