A niche-market iPad app I first released a year ago has unexpectedly gained a larger audience than nearly any product I’ve built before. I added a Feedback button to the home screen of the app, and it has been pouring in. As a result, I’ve ended up making so many changes to the app that it has almost become a different product! Along with a few things I’ve read in the last year, this experience has changed the way I view the process of building software, and the process of building a business. (more…)

The difference between a web designer and a web developer like myself is like the difference between a fashion designer and a tailor or seamstress. The former conceptualizes what a product will look like, and the latter will actually create the product.

I’ve worked with over a dozen designers and created over 100 websites, and I routinely encounter confusion about how this process works. (more…)

The traditional question for web designers to ask before starting a project is, what screen size should we design for? The answer usually comes from looking at a table of browser statistics showing the screen sizes that web users currently own.

The problem with this approach is that users don’t always size their web browser windows to fill their screens. (more…)

In The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks distinguishes between aspects of programming that are hard because we don’t manage them well enough, versus aspects of programming that are inherently hard. This has stuck in my mind over the years as I’ve thought about how to improve my techniques. (more…)

I’ve always been fanatical about backups, based on the mantra that in the computer age, one should never have to do the same work twice. (more…)