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It's not an attack, it's just a statement. If one purpose is to appear employable, he should not mention that it took him 6 months to write it because that is j

It's not an attack, it's just a statement. If one purpose is to appear employable, he should not mention that it took him 6 months to write it because that is just too long.

Pyramus 5y ago
It's one thing to "write an app" and something else completely to bring it to a standard consumable by lay users. Having published and maintained an app that is in active use by even a couple hundred users gives you an advantage in employability and quite a big one at that. Your post makes it seem like you have neither published an app yourself nor hired single devs who have, and it's easy to not appreciate.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  I've been a professional iOS developer for a decade. 6 months is way too long for that app. My very first app took 10 weeks, including learning to program, and it was more complex than MaskerAid. And better looking, was even featured in the app store in a few countries.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    Well then - congratulations! You are an outlier. From my experience significantly less than 5% of iOS/Android devs have created a somewhat popular app, and maintained it for some time.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Oh, it wasn't popular, only got a few thousand downloads, I was hired by a social media app right when I finished my own app so I never had time to market it. Not that I would know how to do that. It was just an experiment.
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    I just took a look at your website, and your profile there, such as it is, it says you “built product at Apple”. Not sure what that means, though it implies you worked at apple, meanwhile your LinkedIn profile only lists your finance and environmental industry positions, so not really sure what to make of that. Regardless you appear to be a 0.01%er congrats, but no need to talk down to others.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Unless you want to hire me or invest, you don't need to make anything of that. Just trust me, 6 months is way too long. Or listen to the cohosts' reaction when he mentions it. Not talking down, just telling it like it is. There is no rule on HN that you may only post laudatory comments. That would make the whole site useless. My point is that if he wants to be employable, he either needs to become more efficient, or at least hide how slow he is. I'm sure he's raking in cash from the podcast so he shouldn't really worry about it at all in my opinion.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        It was a passion project. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to make even as much money as he makes from being a cohost on a podcast that charges $5500/ad read * 3 ad reads. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to get it done either.
        Grustaf 5y ago
        That's not the impression I got. To me it sounded like he was hoping to earn money from it. He said the same thing about his youtube channel, which also seemed very unlikely.
        scarface74 5y ago
        He’s been friends with most of the most successful indie developers in the iOS world - his cohost Marco - do you really think that Marco didn’t help set realistic expectations?
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Now let’s say you were already making over a quarter million a year doing one podcast for 3 hours a week. How much effort would you put into an app?
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Zero, that's my point. It's a waste of time.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        So you have never done passion projects just to keep your skills up and stay familiar with an ecosystem?
        Grustaf 5y ago
        No, not really. I've done passion projects for things I have a passion for, but not for keeping my skills up.
        scarface74 5y ago
        Well many people do. Like Casey, I did a pivot from pure software development to a job that pays much more given my skillset and interest. But is much more of a niche. I keep an active open source profile just so I can pivot back to pure software development if needed. Casey likely makes more as a podcast host than he would make in corp dev as a mobile developer. Before that he was a .Net developer.
      - cjensen 5y ago
        It's something to talk about on a podcast, so it is not a waste of time. Also, for many of us programmers, we really need programming in our lives otherwise we get that itch. Your comments have been terribly absolutist about your own opinions. Please accept that other people have different priorities than you. Accept that other people have different comfort levels regarding their children's privacy than you. There's nothing wrong with your priorities, but there's also nothing wrong with people whose priorities are different.
scarface74 5y ago
It isn’t his full time job. He was doing it as a side project He’s on a 3 person podcast that could very well gross over $850K a year - 3 ad reads * 5500 * 52 weeks a year [1]. I wouldn’t make doing an app a high priority either. He’s also on other podcasts. [1] https://atp.fm/sponsor https://atp.fm/sponsor
- Grustaf 5y ago
  Yeah I wouldn't spend a second thinking of that if I were on a high profile podcast like that. Much better to focus on growing that brand.
  - kemayo 5y ago
    Mind you, given that Liss is on a bunch of Apple-focused podcasts, writing and publishing and marketing an iOS app really is giving him useful brand-related experiences. Being able to pull out recent personal anecdotes is very handy, even if he doesn't make any notable money directly from it.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Sure, in theory that makes sense. But he hasn't mentioned it once before last week, and he usually talks very little about his apps, so I don't think that is the main, or even an important reason. He also hasn't mentioned that as a reason.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        He’s been talking about his apps for a decade. I first heard about FastText from an episode of Marco’s first podcast. He talked about his other app too. Siracusa even talks about his little Mac App Store apps that he admits may have made $30. Marco is the only one who considers his app development as a real income stream.
hombre_fatal 5y ago
When someone says they spent N months on something, that's not total clock time they spent in the code editor. It means they built it over the course of N months. You actually have no idea how long it took them.
- kemayo 5y ago
  Yeah, unless Liss explicitly said he was working full-time on it, I'd very much assume this is a "the thing I was fiddling with around my other responsibilities" project.
yokoprime 5y ago
From reading your comments it seems like you're hoping or at least expecting this app to fail, not because it's bad, but because of what you think about the personality of the creator. It's weird and seems pretty toxic. You don't like the app, say what's bad about the app, don't shit all over the creator.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  The app is not bad. If I had this need I would have used it. Well if Instagram hadn’t had it built in. Many apps with worse UX and UI have been roaring successes, that is not the issue. I’m just saying that I think it’s very unlikely he will make any money from it, for reasons I’ve outlined before. If malice was my motive, then I would egg him on, encourage him to spend lots of time doing something that doesn’t appear to be a strength.

It's not an attack, it's just a statement. If one purpose is to appear employable, he should not mention that it took him 6 months to write it because that is just too long.

Pyramus 5y ago

It's one thing to "write an app" and something else completely to bring it to a standard consumable by lay users. Having published and maintained an app that is in active use by even a couple hundred users gives you an advantage in employability and quite a big one at that. Your post makes it seem like you have neither published an app yourself nor hired single devs who have, and it's easy to not appreciate.

Grustaf 5y ago
I've been a professional iOS developer for a decade. 6 months is way too long for that app. My very first app took 10 weeks, including learning to program, and it was more complex than MaskerAid. And better looking, was even featured in the app store in a few countries.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  Well then - congratulations! You are an outlier. From my experience significantly less than 5% of iOS/Android devs have created a somewhat popular app, and maintained it for some time.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Oh, it wasn't popular, only got a few thousand downloads, I was hired by a social media app right when I finished my own app so I never had time to market it. Not that I would know how to do that. It was just an experiment.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  I just took a look at your website, and your profile there, such as it is, it says you “built product at Apple”. Not sure what that means, though it implies you worked at apple, meanwhile your LinkedIn profile only lists your finance and environmental industry positions, so not really sure what to make of that. Regardless you appear to be a 0.01%er congrats, but no need to talk down to others.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Unless you want to hire me or invest, you don't need to make anything of that. Just trust me, 6 months is way too long. Or listen to the cohosts' reaction when he mentions it. Not talking down, just telling it like it is. There is no rule on HN that you may only post laudatory comments. That would make the whole site useless. My point is that if he wants to be employable, he either needs to become more efficient, or at least hide how slow he is. I'm sure he's raking in cash from the podcast so he shouldn't really worry about it at all in my opinion.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      It was a passion project. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to make even as much money as he makes from being a cohost on a podcast that charges $5500/ad read * 3 ad reads. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to get it done either.
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        That's not the impression I got. To me it sounded like he was hoping to earn money from it. He said the same thing about his youtube channel, which also seemed very unlikely.
        scarface74 5y ago
        He’s been friends with most of the most successful indie developers in the iOS world - his cohost Marco - do you really think that Marco didn’t help set realistic expectations?
- scarface74 5y ago
  Now let’s say you were already making over a quarter million a year doing one podcast for 3 hours a week. How much effort would you put into an app?
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Zero, that's my point. It's a waste of time.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      So you have never done passion projects just to keep your skills up and stay familiar with an ecosystem?
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        No, not really. I've done passion projects for things I have a passion for, but not for keeping my skills up.
        scarface74 5y ago
        Well many people do. Like Casey, I did a pivot from pure software development to a job that pays much more given my skillset and interest. But is much more of a niche. I keep an active open source profile just so I can pivot back to pure software development if needed. Casey likely makes more as a podcast host than he would make in corp dev as a mobile developer. Before that he was a .Net developer.
    - cjensen 5y ago
      It's something to talk about on a podcast, so it is not a waste of time. Also, for many of us programmers, we really need programming in our lives otherwise we get that itch. Your comments have been terribly absolutist about your own opinions. Please accept that other people have different priorities than you. Accept that other people have different comfort levels regarding their children's privacy than you. There's nothing wrong with your priorities, but there's also nothing wrong with people whose priorities are different.

scarface74 5y ago

It isn’t his full time job. He was doing it as a side project He’s on a 3 person podcast that could very well gross over $850K a year - 3 ad reads * 5500 * 52 weeks a year [1]. I wouldn’t make doing an app a high priority either. He’s also on other podcasts. [1] https://atp.fm/sponsor https://atp.fm/sponsor

Grustaf 5y ago
Yeah I wouldn't spend a second thinking of that if I were on a high profile podcast like that. Much better to focus on growing that brand.
- kemayo 5y ago
  Mind you, given that Liss is on a bunch of Apple-focused podcasts, writing and publishing and marketing an iOS app really is giving him useful brand-related experiences. Being able to pull out recent personal anecdotes is very handy, even if he doesn't make any notable money directly from it.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Sure, in theory that makes sense. But he hasn't mentioned it once before last week, and he usually talks very little about his apps, so I don't think that is the main, or even an important reason. He also hasn't mentioned that as a reason.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      He’s been talking about his apps for a decade. I first heard about FastText from an episode of Marco’s first podcast. He talked about his other app too. Siracusa even talks about his little Mac App Store apps that he admits may have made $30. Marco is the only one who considers his app development as a real income stream.

hombre_fatal 5y ago

When someone says they spent N months on something, that's not total clock time they spent in the code editor. It means they built it over the course of N months. You actually have no idea how long it took them.

kemayo 5y ago
Yeah, unless Liss explicitly said he was working full-time on it, I'd very much assume this is a "the thing I was fiddling with around my other responsibilities" project.

yokoprime 5y ago

From reading your comments it seems like you're hoping or at least expecting this app to fail, not because it's bad, but because of what you think about the personality of the creator. It's weird and seems pretty toxic. You don't like the app, say what's bad about the app, don't shit all over the creator.

Grustaf 5y ago
The app is not bad. If I had this need I would have used it. Well if Instagram hadn’t had it built in. Many apps with worse UX and UI have been roaring successes, that is not the issue. I’m just saying that I think it’s very unlikely he will make any money from it, for reasons I’ve outlined before. If malice was my motive, then I would egg him on, encourage him to spend lots of time doing something that doesn’t appear to be a strength.