From idea to the first sale
My goal was modest: one single license sold until the end of this year. One inch of trade. Miles of satisfaction.
My goal was modest: one single license sold until the end of this year. One inch of trade. Miles of satisfaction.
For a long time in my career, writing about programming meant writing in English. This kind of 'anglo-driven' behavior started to change when I got introduced to an excellent professional who became one of my best friends.
At some point in my career, I started to dream with two HTML improvements that would make me very, very, very happy.
At the start of the past year, I was creating a cover letter to compete for a position at Basecamp. Along with my text, I wanted to use a metaphor. After all, Basecamp is the 'cradle' of Rails. But how to be sure that 'cradle of' would express in English the same meaning this metaphor has in Portuguese, my mother language?
Gatsby, Next.js, Jekyll, and Hugo are frameworks considered 'Static Site Generators' you can use to achieve that goal. However, the purpose of this post is to present a solution that makes it simpler, decoupled from any framework.
Then you face the opportunity to walk through an untouchable and green field. A road still free from any obstacle. That is, it is time to start a new, promising and shining application from scratch. First step? Set it up, of course. That is the moment in which *not-so-interesting* decisions could rapidly make that green field yellow and drop the first stones over that clean road.
For those who have programmed a lot using AngularJS, the first impression when coming across a React component may not be the best. Seeing JavaScript and HTML sharing the same space is likely the most significant impact. But do not get carried away by appearances. React is far less strange than the first impression might suggest.
Something curious about lots of the most popular programming concepts, principles and good practices is that they seem to disappear or, at least, keep distant, when the software we are talking about is a web client, also known as a front-end application.
Octocash. That was the name of the product that I, and two colleagues, launched four years ago. Starting to build a product in the early stage of your career is such a great experience. Every member overflows optimism. Optimism is so abundant that nothing more is necessary to develop the product. The level of enthusiasm is so high that understanding profoundly a problem becomes optional. After designing a logo and the first application views, we worked hard until putting the product in the market. Visitor after visitor, we begin to measure a bitter result of zero conversions. So we sadly realized that it required more than just opening the store to make a business succeed.
We all can recognize beauty at the right moment we stand before it. That was the certainty that I had the day I visited the world's largest open-air contemporary art museum. It's a garden that could be called paradise. Inhotim.