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20 years working on the same software product
I released version 1 of my table seating planning software, PerfectTablePlan, in February 2005. 20 years ago this month. It was a different world. A world of Windows, shareware and CDs. A lot has c…
Andy Brice
...requires more than just good programming.
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Visit successfulsoftware.net → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jul 2009 – Sep 2026
Tech Industry & Business 11Software Engineering 7Career & Management 7Tools & Productivity 2Society, Policy & Culture 2Security & Privacy 2
2
No-one knows what they are doing
When I was a child I assumed that all the adults running the world knew what they were doing. Now that I am an adult, I am under no such illusions. Just look at the current British government. They…
3
Lifestyle programming
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” ― Bob Dylan I am a lifestyle programmer. I run a one-man software product bus…
4
GitHub has not removed malicious imitation software after 3 weeks
On the 31st August I got an email from a customer, telling me that they had found an imitation of my data wrangling software on Github. I’m not linking to it, but here is a screenshot: It is …
5
Making your own hot sauce
I like hot sauces. My favourite is Ring of fire, a hot sauce that I first encountered in the US. It is a mix of habanero and serrano chillis, tomatoes, vinegar and spices. It is very tasty and (des…
6
Why isn’t there a decent file format for tabular data?
Tabular data is everywhere. I support reading and writing tabular data in various formats in all 3 of my software application. It is an important part of my data transformation software. But all th…
7
The 1% fallacy
Here is how to make a fortune writing software: Pick a large and established software market e.g. back-up, anti-virus or customer relationship management (CRM) software. Write a new product for tha…
8
Lessons learned from 13 failed software products
“No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients.” – Proverb Software entrepreneur culture is full of stories of the products that succeeded. But what about t…
9
The AI bullshit singularity
I’m sure we are all familiar with the idea of a technological singularity. Humans create an AI that is smart enough to create an even smarter successor. That successor then creates an even sm…
10
FogBugz goes dark
Today I got an email titled ‘Your Manuscript Account Balance’ which said: Your Manuscript account is now in arrears in the amount of $31.25. Use this link to specify a credit card for y…
11
‘Honeypot’ pages to try to convert people searching for cracked software
Software piracy is a fact of life for vendors of desktop software. Take a look at Google’s helpful suggestions if you search on the name of one of my products: Trying to make your software cr…
12
What non-technical users don’t understand about your software
If you are writing consumer software you have to understand that you and your average user have a very different level of understanding of computers. When you first start doing support it can be a …
13
The declining profitability of Google Adwords
Google Adwords used to be a great way to get targeted traffic cheaply (if you knew what you were doing). I think those days are well and truly over. I have been using Google Adwords to advertise my…
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The brutal truth about marketing your software product
We tend to hear a lot about software industry success stories. But most of us mere mortals have to fail a few times before we learn enough to succeed. In this guest post William Echlin talks about …
15
Ship of Fools
I recently had a 3 week holiday in Florida with my family. My 17 year old son is interested in rocketry and my wife is interested in wildlife. We got to see plenty of both and had a great time. The…
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Low-Competition Niches In Retail Software
This is a guest post by Joannes Vermorel, founder of the Lokad Forecasting Service. Software developers seem to be herd animals. They like to stay very close to each other. As a result, the marketp…
17
How to waste money in Google Adwords
I have looked at quite a few Google Adwords accounts as part of a 1-day consulting package I do for other microISVs and small software vendors. I have also talked to a lot of people at conferences…
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Where I Program - Independent Developer's Cribs
whereiwrite.org is a photographic project showing science fiction writers and their offices. I started wondering what the offices of other microISVs and small software companies look like. Were the…