Servicing yourself

So one of the many things I love about being a programmer is that if I don’t find a tool that does something I need I just create one that will do it for me. Also if I don’t like the way a program I use works, I can just change it the way I want it to (assuming its open source).

Now granted I don’t distribute a lot of my apps as they are created for flaws or annoyances I found, this usually means that my apps don’t apply to most other people or at least confuses a lot of other people. I have released some of my apps for others to use and they have been used with varying success, so any project I have started or worked on has never really been a failure in my eyes. With enough effort and time I could probably make them public ready.

Unfortunately for most people that are not programmers bringing their ideas to life can sometimes become problematic as conveying there ideas and thoughts to others doesn’t always translate into what they envisioned.

The other alternative is to learn a programming language in the field that you want to distribute your app (web, desktop). This tends to have mixed results depending on how long and how much the user grasps the different programming concepts. The worst that can happen is that the user publishes the app and has a programmer maintain the app, the usually ends in frustration on the programmers side as they realize just how little the original person understood about programming. This problem becomes compounded when the idea of a re write is suggested and the original person doesn’t want this because they feel the app already works for them.

So what I want to know is this, do you write custom one time apps to sort/fix problems that you have? Are you a programmer or not? If you are not a programmer do you use a dynamic language to make it easier to get your apps working?

The reason I ask these questions is because it seems the most non programmers that get into development start of with some dynamic language and move on from there. This usually becomes their answer for everything and I can understand why (being able to make simple changes and see the results without having to compile etc.)

So what are your thoughts on this leave a comment and let me know.

~stalkerh