Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Focusing on Writing Code

I wrote this on Friday's post:

Building and marketing products isn’t for me. I prefer to be neck deep in code rather than marketing tools.

I've been thinking about it a lot over the weekend.

The pursuit to build something that people will want to use and buy is what many people want. To take an idea, build it, and turn it into a successful product. Everytime I see an app (usually based on a simple idea) rocket to the top of the App Store charts I wonder, "Why didn't I think of that?".

The thing is though, this usually isn't the first idea for that person. It might be their tenth or even twentieth attempt at making a successful product. Yes, it might be their first attempt, but I don't think there's ever been a single attempt at a product that's went on to sell millions. There's always been a few failed attempts before that one successful product happens.

Rather than continually change the idea of Journalong into something that works I simply let it trudge along based on it's same initial idea. If I was really serious about making Journalong into something better I might have changed how it recorded entries, or changed it's target market to a more focused group, or even open sourced it after the first three months of inactivity. It's taken me a couple of years to finally admit defeat.

A continually pivoting product isn't something I have a whole lot of time for. lame excuse you might say. I would disagree. The ongoing testing and validating of a product until it starts to gain the traction of paying clients isn't what I want to do. I want to write software, but I also want to be paid for writing that software. I'm exploring a few options such as open sourcing a few ideas to see what happens, but for the moment I'll be keeping the focus on writing code rather than building products.

Journalong has been limping along for a few months now. With almost no interest from myself in rolling out anymore features and a lack of activity from those users that have accounts there, I made the decision a few weeks ago that I would kill the Journalong service off completely and transform it into something else. There were two main factors that influenced this:

  1. Lack of Interest & Activity - Journalong started off well with and managed to accumulate over 100 users in the first couple of months. The next few months weren't so great. A couple of users signed up to the service every month since then but in the last few months there has only been two sign ups. From those people that signed up, just a few accounts used Journalong on a monthly basis. Not exactly a busy service you could say.
  2. Being Free - In the beginning Journalong was free, then it was paid, then it became free again. If anything from this, I've learned that products and services like this should be paid right from the start. Yes, it can be a hassle coding the payment processing for a web site, but even just a basic monthly subscription should be there if you want the product to become a sustainable business. Once something has been free, it's almost impossible to convince all users of the product or service that they should pay for it.

So that's the reasons for killing Journalong as a service so what next for Journalong? Well I did want to remove myself from managing a dead service, but I think there's still value to having a Markdown journal for your Dropbox. So, over the last couple of days I took the source code for Journalong apart and repackaged it as an open source Sinatra application that you can run on your own computer.

The great thing about this is that I can keep Journalong going at my own pace. Being open source I can make any changes I need or others need in my own time and accept changes from others.

Building and marketing products isn't for me. I prefer to be neck deep in code rather than marketing tools.

What was the last thing you discovered? I mean really discovered. Not just a link that you found interesting or an article that you thought was moderating intriguing — but a life-interrupting ‘uncovering of knowledge’ that immediately adjusted your lens on the world around you. When was the last time you had one of those discoveries?

— In Praise of Discovery by James Shelley

Curtis McHale knows his limits when it comes to keeping up with the ever changing world of web technology.

It would be super easy for me to longingly dwell on the times when I could devote an entire weekend to learning something new. Really all that would do is make my time with my kids less enjoyable.

Maybe I’d even start resenting them for ruining my perfect weekends of yesteryear.

That’s lame. Instead I just let weekends be what they are and embrace the constrained environment. Because I can no longer dig into new things all weekend or work weekends I have to be more efficient with my time during the week.

— How I Keep Up With Web Technology by Curtis McHale

Faced with the chance of hacking away on my MacBook all weekend or spending time with my family, the latter would win each time. I'm past that stage of my career now where I'm always on the lookout for the next big thing in web technology. I know what's on the horizon in terms of technology, and for me that's enough.

Added a dollop of peanut butter and honey to my porridge this morning. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be.