It Would Be So Easy To Give Up.

I’ve been an on again, off again developer ever since my first year of university. I wasn’t particularly good at it either and it took me a good year of slogging through various programming languages before the penny finally dropped when I started using C#. After that initial hump however I found it much easier to pick up on new languages and technologies which has ultimately culminated in me attempting to create my own web application from the ground up, something I would’ve seen as impossible just a few years ago. It’s just over a year and a half since I began work on my pet project and in that time it’s gone through 3 complete rewrites, 4 redesigns and several months of me staring at a computer screen wondering if this is the best thing to do with my time.

It was that little hater getting into my head again.

I hadn’t really been thinking about much until a friend of mine commented on how he’d noticed that my writings indicated I was getting tired of developing Lobaco. After thinking about it for a while I knew he was right, the long weekends spent coding and testing had been taking their toll on me mentally. I had begun to fantasise about other applications I could be developing or other hobbies I could pick up, losing hours in research. After a while they started to meld together and my new found hobbies were turning into other potential start up ideas and I began lusting after them as they began to look so much more tangible than Lobaco. It was the dreaded unknowing procrastination beginning to slip in again and I had been welcoming it willingly.

As Jay Smooth put so aptly it was being in the thick of creation for so long that was making me lose sight of the end game. I’ve been writing on this blog for over 2 years now and there have been many times I’ve thought I should just give it up and shut the whole thing down (I would gain a considerable amount of time per day back again) but every time I get a comment either here or in real life I know that the work I do here is appreciated and it keeps me going that much longer. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that some days I just won’t be able to find anything to write about and that doesn’t mean this blog is worthless. Still I do enjoy blogging and when I’ve got a topic I’m passionate about I feel it shows and it’s posts like that that keep me coming back every day in the hopes I’ll hit on one of those topics.

Ever since that realisation I’ve been making great strides with the Lobaco iPhone application. Last weekend was probably my most productive ever with 4 core features being implemented and many improvements made thanks to some open source libraries I hadn’t come across before. Now it feels like I’ve hit one of those points where my progress as an iPhone developer is accelerating and my formerly hacker style approach is now becoming more standardized and new features are just rolling off my fingers. I’ve still got a couple months of development effort ahead of me before I’ll be releasing the iPhone application to beta testers but now its only a matter of time rather than the impossible mountain it used to be.

I guess this is why the majority of start ups are founded with more than just a single person. It’s so easy to get lost in your own world when you’re trying to bring an idea into reality and having someone there beside you really helps to keep you in the game and focused on the goal. Whilst I haven’t found anyone (yet, but I’m still looking!) who’s willing to go on this startup journey with me my group of close friends have acted as the sounding board and grounding rod that’s gotten me this far into the project. The next few months are going to be the make or break time for Lobaco but with the progress I’ve made in just the past couple weeks I have a much renewed level of confidence, and a desire to succeed that is yet to be satiated.