The idea ain't the hard part. One writer finds out hard it is to create an app | Hacker News Reader

The idea ain't the hard part. One writer finds out hard it is to create an app

unlimitedmagazine.com

61 pointsDuncanKinney37 comments

Spoiler: At no point in the story does the author download Xcode.

Haha, I thought you meant he just paid someone else to do it... No, so much worse. He didn't even -try-.

His app could have had a working version on the store in 2 weeks, if he'd really tried. It would benefit from further work, but would have proved his point.

Instead, he got dazzled by how much work the -best- apps take and gave up. It's like looking at a guitar and realizing how much work it takes to become a rockstar, and just giving up before you've even picked the thing up.

Most people aren't rockstars, and most apps don't hit #1 on -any- list.

Hah, wow... I read both of your comments first and still didn't know what to expect in the article.

Yes, she literally just Googled "how do you make an app?", saw that it was hard, and is now reporting this to us.

No, a non-programmer cannot create an iPhone app in 2 weeks, even a really bad one. You've been programming too long.

True, it is a lot harder than it looks. Once you know how to do something it seems easy.

I wonder if this is how rock stars talk when they get together.

lol You are correct, if you meant he would program it himself. I meant that he'd pay someone to write it for him. Since that was obviously his idea all along anyhow.

And you think a firm/dev worth their salt would take up his project at short notice, go from start to finish (including testing and debugging) in 2 weeks and it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg?

I would if I knew it was going to generate some press :)

I interpreted 'If [reporter] really tried' in the grandparent post to mean, "if reporter earnestly sought out and hired an expert".

Of course, the know-how for doing that takes time to develop as well.

But, if this reporter's real goal was getting an app done, rather than writing a story, she probably would have spoken to more people who had actually hired devs for short projects. Instead, she seems to have spoken to just enough people to get usable quotes for the story.

She never switches from the layperson's "invent" terminology (a misnomer for the ideas-into-functions process of software development) and is only ever hand-wavy about going rates for expert help. There is someone out there who has the expertise to make a simple version 1 of her app in 2 weeks or less; how much does that person charge?

I noticed the use of the word "invent" as well. It kind of hurt to read the first time. I thought after her first Google search she might realize that there was a better word for it, and start searching for how to "create" or "write" or "code" an iPhone application.

It also doesn't cost "hundreds of thousands, if not millions" of dollars to get a contractor to develop a garage sale-finding app.

I mean, I could build a pretty amazing garage sale-finding app for that much, but I think Brandon Tennant either builds apps that are part of larger marketing campaigns (and only sees part of that budget), or is completely exaggerating in the hopes of landing a really big fish from that article. Or the author misunderstood him.

This IS how most non-developers "try" :)

I had an associate who would usually work with me to bring his web-based ideas to life. He decided to see if he could create one of his web-app ideas himself, and after realizing that it meant spending HOURS in front of the screen, piecing together a complicated puzzle of code while switching gears here and there to be a creative designer as well, it became evident that it wasn't a walk in the park.

"Trying" for some people will consist of searching Google for a magic spell that makes your ideas come to life.

Developcus Appeomus!

I think that's actually a really crucial point— not only do non-technical people not know how to code, but they don't know that they don't know how. People who have no idea how we do what we do assume that it's easy.

Edit: I actually think it's a little sad when you think about it. You know those steps for after "Google it" comes up blank, the ones like "Check if there are two things I can combine to do this" or "Look at the file format, maybe it's just tab-separated or something"? Those steps don't exist for most people.

This must be how mechanics feel about cars, huh.

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Serious question: is Xcode and ObjC the best way to write a "quick" iphone app? As opposed to using something like Corona[1] or Wax[2]

[1] http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

[2] https://github.com/probablycorey/wax

It depends on what your goals are.

Arguably, the easiest way to make a "quick" iphone app, is to write a web app with a UI optimized for mobile and put it on a server and give out the URL. The app won't feel quite like a native app, it won't be able to run background tasks, each time you run it, it'll probably need to load all of the resources, but it's a great way to quickly test your concept, it'll work on all mobile platforms, and you won't have to get it approved by an app store.

Agreed, and if getting it into the App Store was a requirement, wrapping a functional "Web App" in something like PhoneGap is probably the easiest thing you'll ever do using Xcode.

In the late 90's, people thought they could strike riches by throwing up a webpage.

Today, people think they can strike riches by creating a mobile app.

Not much has changed.

25% to develop the app for the MEDL incubator? Is the other 75% for just coming up with the idea, or also for launching, getting users, promoting, etc?

EDIT: Apparently they handle everything and you get 25% just for the idea. Not bad.

I've had a few ideas that I'd gladly give up 75% of to have someone else do them... If they do them properly.

I have a boatload of ideas that I would gladly give up for a 10% equity stake.

The prices he quotes are WAY outsized. Low to Mid 5 figures will do a huge proportion of apps that "People have an idea about" using US or Canadian programmers. Some will go into 6 figures, but millions? Really? Not for most ideas.

(This is what I do for a living, 3rd party app development).

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I was the editor who commissioned the piece. To give some context the writer had about 12 days to write the article. An impartial observer (not me obviously) might get the impression that the people offering up advice here might need to take themselves a little less seriously. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading and commenting.

On the contrary, we love the article. I'm not an iOS developer, but to me the obvious steps are to start from "figure out the development environment". Apparently to an outsider, finding a consultant to do it is about the only option, and he doesn't even have the resources or background to communicate effectively with developers. I guess I'm used to working with people who, though they may never have written a line of code in their life, are familiar with the process at a high level.

To give some context, most of the people on this site are professional software developers. i.e., my full-time job is writing iPhone apps, so I've been thinking about that process for the last 2-3 years.

For me personally, 75% of my working hours is spent talking to people who have an app idea and don't have the funds to execute, and trying to separate those from paying clients. If I could cut that number in half, I would literally be twice as productive. It would be like adding 3 hours to every workday, or producing an additional ten apps a year.

Fair enough. This is hackernews. I've passed the link to this comment thread along to the writer and we'll slowly educate the client base, one at a time.

Should it (programming, creating an app, executing an idea) be this hard? Or would that only lead to more fart apps and more disappointment later in the process when the app doesn't hit it big?

Sure, everything should be easy. The problem is, software development is difficult by nature. It's not the kind of thing you can pick up in a week or two and make an app with, and it probably never will be.

There are things like App Inventor that try to make it dead simple, but they all fail in that you can't make something reasonably complex with it.

It would be great if this was easy, but hundreds of people have tried and failed to make it dead simple and I think there's a reason for that.

You could ask the same thing about neurosurgery ... I mean, it should be easy and cheap to excise a brain tumor right?

I think a lot of people who have ideas for Apps never move beyond the "vague elevator pitch" idea of what it should actually do. It takes more work than people realize just to specify an App's behavior, completely independently of writing any code.

Programming is hard, because it requires a mode of thinking and a level of mental discipline that most people just simply don't possess. Humans think in abstracts; computers deal in specifics.

As long as this is true, programming will be "hard", because until I can program a computer like the Holodeck by speaking to it and having it infer my intent, I will have to be specific about what I want to do, and this is not something that people are used to doing. It takes training to learn to think like a computer, and that will be fully necessary until computers learn to think like us.

I doubt it ever will become easy; the goalposts will keep moving.

For example, if, 20 or even 10 years ago, years ago, you built a webpage with nothing but a textarea and a 'save' button that allows people to save a single text per URL, you have a CMS that could have made you real money. Nowadays, wikis must be more advanced than that.

Having said that, it is possible to lower the barriers. I think it would be extremely cool and useful to have something HyperCard-like on iPad. I do not think everyone's five minutes of work should be on the app store, though.

Also think of spreadsheets. They allow normal people to write simple programs.

I think the author went about it the totally wrong way for a startup. (Although, maybe typical).

Instead of picking up a mockup tool, or using HTML/CSS to create a simple mobile web version (or a native app using PhoneGap), he goes asking other people to do it for him. (Probably for "sweat equity" ;) )

The article started out with promise: yes, kids can write iPhone apps. But those kids wrote those iPhone apps not by talking with consultants who charge $$$ for app development. You know how those kids developed their apps? By sitting down, learning about how to program for the iOS, and writing f#$$@ code. Not by talking to developers to do it for them. That's how.

I was half expecting an article talking about the state of the art of entry level development: PhoneGap, or other drag and drop methods. MacRuby for getting on the Mac App store... whatever. Something maybe easier to laypeople than "here's this weird objective-C thing with []s everywhere".

Having said that, I do make my living as a freelance developer (Rails, iOS)...

TL;DR: This is the story of a lot of startups: "I have this great idea! Oh, it's going to cost $N,000 to develop a minimum viable product? This is hard". On the other hand, it may serve as a reality check for people with a new idea that think we (as developers) can program DOOM in a weekend, for free err 'exposure'."

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