Along with some other users from Hacker News, I’m doing my darndest to get Appointment Reminder into the hands of customers by the end of November. It looks like it is going to happen, too. (There was an early blog post about this here.)
I worked for almost three years as a cog in a Japanese megacorporation, and one of the best parts about that experience (perhaps even worth the 70 hour weeks) was that they taught me how to be a professional engineer. Prior to doing so, my workflow generally involved a whole lot of bubble gum, duct tape, and praying. I spent a lot of time firefighting broken software as a result, to the detriment of both my customers and myself. Talking to other software developers has made me realize that I’m not the only person who was never taught that there are options superior to bubblegum. If you aren’t lucky enough to work at a company that has good engineering in its very DNA, you’re likely to not know much about them.
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) ran four small software businesses. He writes about software, marketing, sales, and general business topics. Opinions here are his own.