Christmas as a developer can be a very interesting time of year. In talking with my family about the plans, presents for the kids, and who is attending what day, one though kept coming to mind: “I can just make an iPhone App for this.” While the thought of making something that would help organize the entire family’s holiday events twirled around my mind, much like the kids running through the house like crazy gremlins who live off sugar, I started thinking about how I would explain this new idea to my parents. My parents like technology, however they sometimes do not embrace change especially when it takes the form of a new shiny futuristic device.
So the thought crossed my mind that I should start simpler like I do with customers who are new to custom software development. We started with the concept of blank pieces of paper so that everyone could organize their own holiday information. Before the 2017 holidays, my job was to decipher those papers, organize the thoughts that were jotted down, and mimick the flow they may have used to organize the different topics. On Christmas day, I collected all of the notes that everyone had come up with for their holiday plans without telling them my plans for next year. When I got home and looked at all the notes, I wasn’t horribly surprised to see that the majority of the papers had little on them. I mean, it is the holidays. Who wants to make notes?
Now that the holidays have passed and I still want next year to be a much easier planning process, I am going to do what any great developer would do. And no, the answer isn’t take a nap until summer to recover from all the great holiday food. (Although, the thought is enticing.) I am going to start small and simple with creating one small App that will handle the most confusing piece, the Children’s wish lists and who has bought what.
If there is one thing I wanted to convey with my ramblings of a developer’s mind and trying to solve all the issues around them with custom solutions is that our desire to create new things to solve real world problems doesn’t end at 5pm. In fact in many facets of our lives, we approach things with our family much like we do customers we talk to every day. With that, I hope you had a very Happy Holiday and I look forward to updating you on the status of the new Wishlist App at the end of the year.
