Write this application for big $$

[virus1]

Hello, all. I have an ingenious application idea that would sell very well. I cannot disclose this to you all, because of the risk one might take it. However, if you were to write some, or most of the application, we could figure out a way for you to get paid. You would write it, and get a big cut of the profits ($5,000-$15,000). The problem is you won't get it upfront because I have no money. We could sign an agreement for it, and be on our way. An experienced developer could write it in approx. 1 month. Post ideas to get this app made, or comments on anything. PM me if you are interested in the offer.

-Virus

[feakbeak]

Hello, all. I have an ingenious application idea that would sell very well. I cannot disclose this to you all, because of the risk one might take it. However, if you were to write some, or most of the application, we could figure out a way for you to get paid. You would write it, and get a big cut of the profits ($5,000-$15,000). The problem is you won't get it upfront because I have no money. We could sign an agreement for it, and be on our way. An experienced developer could write it in approx. 1 month. Post ideas to get this app made, or comments on anything. PM me if you are interested in the offer.

-Virus
If you know enough to estimate the programming time, why aren't you programming it? You didn't even specify what languages or skill set your project would need.

If you really want to get a software idea off the ground as a profitable business you need more than development, you also need to do sales and marketing. I realize my post is blunt, but I'm not trying to be rude. If you seriously want to start a business off of this idea you should get some capital and do it right. Professional programmers are not going to work for free in the hopes of some profit down the line. Also, $5000-15000 is not a big cut of profit, that's nothing. If someone really liked your idea and you were offering 25+% of the profits then maybe you might get some interest. As it stands you are asking one programmer to create this wonder project for you to make money and you're only offering $5000 - think about it?

I'm a professional programmer and I've been offered to work for "equity" in a "great idea" before. I passed then and although I haven't heard your idea, I am passing now.

If you are serious you could try to obtain a patent for your idea so that you could market it without fear of having stolen. However, patents for software usually require detailed implementation details and competitors can often still write very similar software provided they implement it differently. Oh yeah, patents also cost several thousand dollars.

Best of luck to you, but I don't think you'll be getting many offers. If people wanted to program for free they'd work on open source projects.

[HiRez]

I accept!! In fact, I've already coded your project and it's looking really good. Unfortunately, I cannot show it to you until I'm paid. But I know you're going to love it! :)

[virus1]

If you know enough to estimate the programming time, why aren't you programming it? Because of this project, i have been trying to learn how to program for about 3 months, but i am having troubles grasping it, but i can safely guess at least You didn't even specify what languages or skill set your project would need.yup.. sorry. obj- c with cocoa experienceIf you really want to get a software idea off the ground as a profitable business you need more than development, you also need to do sales and marketing. Yup.. I agree, but i already have that coveredI realize my post is blunt, but I'm not trying to be rude. i forgive you If you seriously want to start a business off of this idea you should get some capital and do it right. Professional programmers are not going to work for free in the hopes of some profit down the line. Who said anything about professional? I was hoping some hobbyist would look at this and say, this sounds fun.. maybe i can make some money off it too. Also, $5000-15000 is not a big cut of profit, that's nothing. Not for a hobbyist If someone really liked your idea and you were offering 25+% of the profits then maybe you might get some interest. OK. If you get a pro to do the entire thing for me. I'd hire you if u'd show some manners As it stands you are asking one programmer to create this wonder project for you to make money and you're only offering $5000 - think about it?I told you it would only take a month, and for a hobbyist, $15000 is pretty damn good.I'm a professional programmer and I've been offered to work for "equity" in a "great idea" before. I passed then and although I haven't heard your idea, I am passing now.good for you.. I would want somone with a little better attitude anyways..If you are serious you could try to obtain a patent for your idea so that you could market it without fear of having stolen. I mentioned i had no money..However, patents for software usually require detailed implementation details and competitors can often still write very similar software provided they implement it differently. Oh yeah, patents also cost several thousand dollars.Gee, thanks, einstein..
Best of luck to you,Dont say it if you dont mean it but I don't think you'll be getting many offers. If people wanted to program for free they'd work on open source projects.now where did we get this free part from..

*sigh* another one bites the dust.. lets keep going..

[feakbeak]

I honestly didn't mean to come off as harsh as I might have. I thought you were seeking a professional of some sort, not a hobbyist. I am perplexed by your proposition. You seem to be interested in producing software for profit - a business. Yet, you are looking to recruit a hobbyist - to me this doesn't make much sense. As a programmer, the coding I do for work is required. I do it to get my paycheck, and therefore I am motivated even when I don't feel like working on a particular project. When I code as a hobbyist though there is little or no pressure. I only work on those things when I feel so inclined. That's what makes those projects more enjoyable - because I can pick and choose to work on what interests me and there is no money on the line to get a product or bug fix out the door.

In retrospect I could have phrased it better, but I just can't see a hobbyist wanting to work on a project that will obviously have deadlines, business contraints and all the associated pressures without having significant financial reward for their efforts.

[virus1]

I honestly didn't mean to come off as harsh as I might have. I thought you were seeking a professional of some sort, not a hobbyist. I am perplexed by your proposition. You seem to be interested in producing software for profit - a business. Yet, you are looking to recruit a hobbyist - to me this doesn't make much sense. As a programmer, the coding I do for work is required. I do it to get my paycheck, and therefore I am motivated even when I don't feel like working on a particular project. When I code as a hobbyist though there is little or no pressure. I only work on those things when I feel so inclined. That's what makes those projects more enjoyable - because I can pick and choose to work on what interests me and there is no money on the line to get a product or bug fix out the door.

In retrospect I could have phrased it better, but I just can't see a hobbyist wanting to work on a project that will obviously have deadlines, business contraints and all the associated pressures without having significant financial rewards for their efforts.
i would love to hire a pro, but my pocketbook simply does not support it. because i cannot hire a pro, i will not get the luxury of setting deadlines, putting severe buisness restraints on the developer, or put so much pressure on them. because of the money, however, i will be able to persuade them to do the project, and work with them effectively.

I am interested in a buisness, but the only development help i need would be the initial development. my hopes is the money i have provided will lure the hobbiests to work on this project. some may look at this as a buisness opritunity, because the money offer is very negotiable, as is the entire deal.

[Blackjack75]

If the idea is really great I think you should publish a detailed specification of what the application would do exactly and in what way. Once that is published and you are the sole creator of the idea I think it'd be hard for someone to just ripp-off the idea and go away with it. Maybe that would motivate some programmer who could enjoy writing your project, during his free time.

A project's values is in it's fine-tuning of details, concept and overall quality. Itunes is "just another mp3 player" yet it was and is still a success. Something like "my idea is for a program that would resize windows automatically" doesn't have much value unless the idea is REALLY going to revolutionize the world. Taking the time to write the product, test it, enhance it is where the biggest investment/risk is taken.

I have also been offered (several times) to work for a percentage of a hypothetically enormous sum. Eventually in my youth I did accept such projects... but the truth is that this kind of work is just not evenly shared. If you don't take any risk yourself then your motivation to avoid a failure of the project is rather small. When you have paid either hard cash or hard worktime for it then you can be certain you'll do your best to be sure the risk wasn't worthless because YOU took the risk, not someone else.

Either you work as a team: someone doing the commercial deals, another the graphics/marketing, another the code and so on, and if there is revenue it is shared according to the amount of work of each participant... or you have an idea that belongs to you for a product that will belong to you and at this point you are asking a programmer to lend you time because you don't trust your project enough to ask a bank to lend you the money to pay the time of such a programmer.

So what risk are you taking? Losing your idea? Is is so revolutionnary that you could patent it? You have really invented somethings that has never been done before?

Experience, sadly, has shown me that what happens usually in this kind of situation is that, even if the product is nice, once the product is finished sales are close to zero because there is no sales forces and the idea is just nice but not enough for customers to appear automatically from nowhere. And the programmer gladly takes his 25% of nothing after having worked several months. The contractor only "risked" to have 75% of zero but actually had much much less work to do.

So again, when doing it as a hobby, it's fine to take the risk to win absolutely nothing, but most people would prefer to work on their own hobbies rather than those of other peoples...

[feakbeak]

Good post Blackjack75, I think you and I are in complete agreement - only your post was rather eloquent and my post just seemed bitter and harsh. I shouldn't have been so negative towards you virus1. It is just that after going through these types of situations, I believe Blackjack75 and I have a better perspective. The offer I had to work for equity turned out disastrous and I am glad I did not stay with the company to work for equity. I was a salaried employee for them, but they ran out of capital and could not pay me any longer, but still wanted my services.

Here is my advice to you. First, thoroughly go over the design of your idea from a functional and user perspective. Hash it over with some trusted friends, mock up a GUI for it, get the design concepts really solid before you ever approach actual development. This is something that is rarely done well, even in the professional development arena. Once you have determined you have a solid, viable product you should then do one of two things. If you really think this can be a commercial success get a business loan for capital and try to execute this project quickly to get an impressive, stable product out the door in short order to start your revenue stream so that you can sustain maintenance development and expansion of your product. If you have doubts that this product would be a success try to start a project with hobbyists - if you have a creative idea you will have to voice it to attract interest. If you go this route, you shouldn't treat it as a business - just let programmers work on this idea with you in their spare time and offer it as shareware, if it is really popular you might make some decent money in terms of supplemental income. You could also forget about making money and do this is an open-source project just for the satisfaction of bringing your idea to fruition.

You can't ride the fence on this one though. You need to decide to do this as a business or do it as a leisure project because most of the time anything in between is a disaster.

[virus1]

If the idea is really great I think you should publish a detailed specification of what the application would do exactly and in what way. Once that is published and you are the sole creator of the idea I think it'd be hard for someone to just ripp-off the idea and go away with it. Maybe that would motivate some programmer who could enjoy writing your project, during his free time. The problem is, there is nothing stopping people from just taking my idea, because although i am sure the idea has been thought of, i think there is a reason it hasn't been made. if ur really interested and think you could help, pm me and i might tell u.
A project's values is in it's fine-tuning of details, concept and overall quality. Itunes is "just another mp3 player" yet it was and is still a success. Something like "my idea is for a program that would resize windows automatically" doesn't have much value unless the idea is REALLY going to revolutionize the world. Taking the time to write the product, test it, enhance it is where the biggest investment/risk is taken.
Of course..
I have also been offered (several times) to work for a percentage of a hypothetically enormous sum. Eventually in my youth I did accept such projects... but the truth is that this kind of work is just not evenly shared. If you don't take any risk yourself then your motivation to avoid a failure of the project is rather small. When you have paid either hard cash or hard worktime for it then you can be certain you'll do your best to be sure the risk wasn't worthless because YOU took the risk, not someone else.

Either you work as a team: someone doing the commercial deals, another the graphics/marketing, another the code and so on, and if there is revenue it is shared according to the amount of work of each participant... or you have an idea that belongs to you for a product that will belong to you and at this point you are asking a programmer to lend you time because you don't trust your project enough to ask a bank to lend you the money to pay the time of such a programmer.

So what risk are you taking? Losing your idea? Is is so revolutionnary that you could patent it? You have really invented somethings that has never been done before?
Unfourtunately, that is what i am risking. If nobody else will help me make it, i will have to learn the programming language and write it in my spare time by myself, because i really believe in this idea, and i know it will prosper
Experience, sadly, has shown me that what happens usually in this kind of situation is that, even if the product is nice, once the product is finished sales are close to zero because there is no sales forces and the idea is just nice but not enough for customers to appear automatically from nowhere. And the programmer gladly takes his 25% of nothing after having worked several months. The contractor only "risked" to have 75% of zero but actually had much much less work to do.
With this idea, it ends up as a win-win situation, which is part of why it is so special
So again, when doing it as a hobby, it's fine to take the risk to win absolutely nothing, but most people would prefer to work on their own hobbies rather than those of other peoples...which is, of course the biggest problem. the thing i think will fix that is the money offered.

[robbieduncan]

As a professional programmer I have to say they people, especially non-programmers (and that includes people trying to learn, more so if they cannot grasp it) are particularly bad at estimating time to complete a project. If you say it will take a month and are looking for people who program as a hobby how much time per day do you expect them to put in? 2 hours? If you say 8 hours a day, 5 days a week that's not a hobby!

Without even seeing your idea I am willing to bet that it would take a single programmer at least 6 months to get it to a polished salable state. You need the code, artwork (icons and so on), documentation (including complete on-line help in at least English) and full testing.

6 months for $15000 is very poor pay indeed. If you want a realisic estimate then feel free to PM me with your idea. I'm not going to steal it, I already have 3 launched Obj-C/Cocoa projects and 3 or 4 more on the go that I don't have enough time for!

[sigamy]

You may want to try elance http://www.elance.com/ or search Google for similar types of resources.

Back in the dot com boom, elance was a place where you could post small jobs like "design a web site for my dental practice". Then developers would bid on your project. They would include samples of their work and you could select the developer you wanted to hire.

It seems that elance is a bit more corporate now, but it may be worth a shot.

[superbovine]

You may want to try elance http://www.elance.com/ or search Google for similar types of resources.

Back in the dot com boom, elance was a place where you could post small jobs like "design a web site for my dental practice". Then developers would bid on your project. They would include samples of their work and you could select the developer you wanted to hire.

It seems that elance is a bit more corporate now, but it may be worth a shot.

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp has more people than elance i believe.

[superbovine]

The problem is, there is nothing stopping people from just taking my idea, because although i am sure the idea has been thought of, i think there is a reason it hasn't been made. if ur really interested and think you could help, pm me and i might tell u. Of course..Unfourtunately, that is what i am risking. If nobody else will help me make it, i will have to learn the programming language and write it in my spare time by myself, because i really believe in this idea, and i know it will prosperWith this idea, it ends up as a win-win situation, which is part of why it is so specialwhich is, of course the biggest problem. the thing i think will fix that is the money offered.

get a NDA.

[virus1]

As a professional programmer I have to say they people, especially non-programmers (and that includes people trying to learn, more so if they cannot grasp it) are particularly bad at estimating time to complete a project. If you say it will take a month and are looking for people who program as a hobby how much time per day do you expect them to put in? 2 hours? If you say 8 hours a day, 5 days a week that's not a hobby!

Without even seeing your idea I am willing to bet that it would take a single programmer at least 6 months to get it to a polished salable state. You need the code, artwork (icons and so on), documentation (including complete on-line help in at least English) and full testing.

6 months for $15000 is very poor pay indeed. If you want a realisic estimate then feel free to PM me with your idea. I'm not going to steal it, I already have 3 launched Obj-C/Cocoa projects and 3 or 4 more on the go that I don't have enough time for!
a pro i know says it would take him one week full time, so i figure multyply by 4, and it would account for part time. and this project is a special case

[virus1]

get a NDA.
with everybody on MR? i don't see how that would work..

[superbovine]

with everybody on MR? i don't see how that would work..

when you hire someone as a consultant to get a real estimate.

[Fukui]

I suggest you read This (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html) and expecialy take the Functional Spec part and take it to heart.
Before you write one line of code, spec spec spec!
You have to map out where you are gonna go before you go.

P.S To pay someone to write a software for a one-time charge and you get to keep all the profits is maybe not a nice thing to do IMO.

[jsw]

a pro i know says it would take him one week full time, so i figure multyply by 4, and it would account for part time. and this project is a special case
Just out of curiosity, if it'd take him a week full time, why wouldn't he work three weekends for the $5K-$15K? I suspect that there are issues with your idea. Note also that (if in fact it takes just a week to write) if your idea is fantastic, a week and a half after it launches a better one will appear on the scene.

Best of luck, though.

[virus1]

Just out of curiosity, if it'd take him a week full time, why wouldn't he work three weekends for the $5K-$15K? I suspect that there are issues with your idea. Note also that (if in fact it takes just a week to write) if your idea is fantastic, a week and a half after it launches a better one will appear on the scene.

Best of luck, though.

my plan works differently, so in the end, a lot more work will be put into the project.

[crap freakboy]

I accept!! In fact, I've already coded your project and it's looking really good. Unfortunately, I cannot show it to you until I'm paid. But I know you're going to love it! :)


lol

thanks for that, made my bad day better.

Saying that though, investing personal time on an idea that may make money in the long run is not to be sniffed at in my opinion. Graphic designers have to invest vast amounts of time doing 'pitch' work with no certainty of it making them money.

[CanadaRAM]

Well Virus1 (now that's a handle that doesn't inspire confidence in this particular thread) I think your business plan is seriously flawed.

You are essentially asking for someone to work for you for free, as you admit you don't have any money. Then at an unspecificed time in the future, after an unspecified amount of marketing and advertising by yourself (and the person has no particular reason to trust your business acumen or sales ability), the person may get $5,000 or $15,000.

If you never sell any units, the programmer will get nothing. Presumably if you sell the company to Adobe or Microsoft for $1M, the programmer will not get $500K, either.

Here's what we know about this project:

Virus1 has an idea, although he won't say what field it is in, let alone what makes it unique and saleable.

Virus1 is not particularly skilled at marketing commuication (as evidenced by the examples in this thread)

Virus1 has not been able to convince a professional programmer that the idea is good enough to take on "on spec" (since the programmer is sensibly insisting on being paid for their week's worth of work)

Virus1 has not been able to sell any financiers, established companies, venture capitalists or relatives and friends on the idea of underwriting the investment.


I think you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a business plan that does not contain the phase "someone programs it for free" and "lots of people somehow buy it".

Include in this business plan how you are going to communicate effectively about the project (including the use of Non Disclosure Agreements) while protecting your inellectual property.

Include a specific and time-based marketing plan including who is going to do the marketing, to whom, how, who are the buyers, where the funding for the advertising, shipping, travel, marketing materials etc, is going to come from, and sales projections: how many units are planned to be sold, by what dates.

You need to estimate all of your expenses, including mundane things like business license, taxes, overheads, phone bills, postage, printing on the advertising material and product packaging, costs for bank and charge card setup and service charges/fees, allowance for bad debts, returns, all of that.

That will tell you how many you have to sell before it starts returning a profit.

Then, you have to raise that amount of money before you start. This initial capitalization is what you need to get the project off the ground. Your completed business plan plus your NDA presentation of the idea should be strong enough to get some speculative money from friends or family, and to someone to commit to your project.

If you can't raise $5000 from friends and family on the strength of your idea and business plan, then bin it. In that case you don't have any basis for asking someone to donate a month's worth of programming to you for a product that you will own all the rights to. As it is, your thread title is inaccurate to downright deceptive.


The other thing you could do is say "I've got a great idea for a shareware program, and if someone wants to develop it with me for fun, then if we ever make any money on it, we'll split the proceeds 50:50"

[James Philp]

If you can't raise $5000 from friends and family on the strength of your idea and business plan, then bin it.
Personally, I'd never ask friends and family to speculate money on me. Things get very nasty if things go wrong.
I'd go to a bank first.
If it's a secure business plan, and you have good credit (and collateral) they will most likely lend you the cash.

[virus1]

thank you very much mr ram. i have the idea in my head, a really good ui.. but somone just took up my offer, using my shakey buisness model i might add. so the deal is probably off. if more people are willing to help, they can continue to pm me. thanks for all your support everyone, and thanks for nothing mr. mean ram.

btw: virus1 is just a name. my name eric means honerable ruler. i don't think that really applies to me. ram, how ever means godlike. and that certianly doesn't match you.

[njmac]

I hope when the project is done you will come back here and post what this is all about. I'm always interested in what ideas people have come up with.

[CanadaRAM]

thank you very much mr ram. i have the idea in my head, a really good ui.. but somone just took up my offer, using my shakey buisness model i might add. so the deal is probably off. if more people are willing to help, they can continue to pm me. thanks for all your support everyone, and thanks for nothing mr. mean ram.

btw: virus1 is just a name. my name eric means honerable ruler. i don't think that really applies to me. ram, how ever means godlike. and that certianly doesn't match you.

Great, a gratuitous personal slur to go with the other highly professional posts you have made here.

Forgive my not associating "Virus1" with "honorable ruler". My comment was that the name Virus1 asking for programmers to work on a secret software project brings up unwanted associations.

And BTW, whether you like me personally or not, if you DON'T have a reasonable business plan when you start doing real business, your project will crash and burn. That's bourne out by thousands upon thousands of failed start-up companies.

[superbovine]

Great, a gratuitous personal slur to go with the other highly professional posts you have made here.

Forgive my not associating "Virus1" with "honorable ruler". My comment was that the name Virus1 asking for programmers to work on a secret software project brings up unwanted associations.

And BTW, whether you like me personally or not, if you DON'T have a reasonable business plan when you start doing real business, your project will crash and burn. That's bourne out by thousands upon thousands of failed start-up companies.

don't forgot knows nothing about the software developement cycle.

[virus1]

Great, a gratuitous personal slur to go with the other highly professional posts you have made here.

Forgive my not associating "Virus1" with "honorable ruler". My comment was that the name Virus1 asking for programmers to work on a secret software project brings up unwanted associations.

And BTW, whether you like me personally or not, if you DON'T have a reasonable business plan when you start doing real business, your project will crash and burn. That's bourne out by thousands upon thousands of failed start-up companies.
youre not so kind yourself there mr ram. i do admit your methods of insulting me are much more subtle, but hurt just as much nonetheless.

how would you associate virus1 with honerable ruler? what do you think i am going to do? pay some hobbyist developer $15,000 to write a virus? my buisness plan may not be that great, but thats a bit far off.

I think ur just mad because i actually found sombody off of MR. and of course you want to know my idea. FYI: bugging the hell out of me isn't going to do it.

I do have a reasonable buisness plan. and here it is:
-Come up with a good idea for an application: Done
-Figure out a genius ui to go along with it: Done
-Find a cheap developer willing to do the initial writing of it: Done
-Make sure nobody insults and humiliates me in the process of doing the last step: Who cares
-Get the application written: In progress
-Sell the application: Its gonna happen
-Pay back the developer: As soon as enough gets sold
-Make me a bunch of money: Hey, im optimistic

[Chaszmyr]

Think you guys could bash Virus1 over the head a little harder? I understand that he didn't present himself with a good business proposal, and the thread title certainly baited flames, but he made his post, said what he had to offer, and if you're not interested you are free to offer input, but be helpful and polite about it.


PS. If you find a developer, and this turns out to be a great project that brings in a boat load of money, I think it would be fair to give the developer a % rather than just $15000.

[virus1]

don't forgot knows nothing about the software developement cycle.
don't forgot u knows nothing about english grammars.

everybody here seems to think i don't have model, a plan, any marketing experience, or even a ui. i already have it all taken care of. thanks for double checking, guys

[superbovine]

don't forgot u knows nothing about english grammars.



And you are one to talk?

[virus1]

And you are one to talk?
it was a form of mockery, genius

[CanadaRAM]

Think you guys could bash Virus1 over the head a little harder? I understand that he didn't present himself with a good business proposal, and the thread title certainly baited flames, but he made his post, said what he had to offer, and if you're not interested you are free to offer input, but be helpful and polite about it

We only get to know as much about someone as they post on the forum.

The original poster wrote a title that is deceptive. The original proposition is "Program my idea for free then if I ever sell it I will pay for your programming time".

Then on their very second post, in reply to direct and honest feedback (from a professional in the field he was looking for) this is what he wrote:

"OK. If you get a pro to do the entire thing for me. I'd hire you if u'd show some manners" "good for you.. I would want somone with a little better attitude anyways.." "Gee, thanks, einstein.." "*sigh* another one bites the dust.. lets keep going.."

If we are talking about bashing, I would say Virus took the first swing.

[virus1]

We only get to know as much about someone as they post on the forum.

The original poster wrote a title that is deceptive. The original proposition is "Program my idea for free then if I ever sell it I will pay for your programming time".
if somebody made my app, why wouldn't i sell it? i titled the thread to get people to pay attention. I knew people would flame me, but it was worth it, because it worked.
Then on their very second post, in reply to direct and honest feedback (from a professional in the field he was looking for) this is what he wrote:

"OK. If you get a pro to do the entire thing for me. I'd hire you if u'd show some manners" "good for you.. I would want somone with a little better attitude anyways.." "Gee, thanks, einstein.." "*sigh* another one bites the dust.. lets keep going.."
It makes a little more sense with the middle parts.. just trying to keep some humor flowing through these solemn bowels of the forums.
If we are talking about bashing, I would say Virus took the first swing.

[CanadaRAM]

everybody here seems to think i don't have model, a plan, any marketing experience, or even a ui. i already have it all taken care of. thanks for double checking, guys
Good for you. You certainly didn't tell us earlier. We only know about you what you chose to tell us - and what you told us would lead any experienced business person to believe that you have not done the basics. I'm still not convinced... a short course at your local community college on how to write a business plan may still be beneficial to you.

Which is why I wrote you a reply (that does not contain a single insult by the way), but does contain the rudiments of the things you need to consider in order to make a business work.

But I obviously wasted my time. You seem inclined to reject any of the actual advice given here by experienced people who have honest opinions and criticisms to offer, and in addition, attacked the people who have given the advice. This is not generally a recommended tactic to gain support and goodwill. Hopefully you will learn the important difference between a criticism and an insult before you have to talk to software executives and bankers.

I am happy for you that you found a programmer. I am apprehensive that the programmer is taking a risk but that's their gig.

And once you sell your 10,000th copy of the application, I will publicly apologise for doubting your idea, and I will buy your product myself.

[CanadaRAM]

if somebody made my app, why wouldn't i sell it?

My apologies. I will reword my statement to:
"Program my idea for free then if I succeed in selling enough of the product to turn a profit I will pay for your programming time"

Your desire to sell it is not in question.

Your opportunity, marketing skills, organizational abilities, luck and promotional funding required to make it a commercial success are, however, unknowns.

There is a pervasive myth that excellence is rewarded - The Field of Dreams scenario "Build it and they will come" - the idea that buyers will flock to a product as soon as they see how good it is. If it were true, Apple would have the 96% marketshare.

The ground is littered with great ideas, programs superior to anything on the market, which although brilliant in concept and elegantly executed, never successfully sold.

[virus1]

Good for you. You certainly didn't tell us earlier. We only know about you what you chose to tell us - and what you told us would lead any experienced business person to believe that you have not done the basics. I'm still not convinced... a short course at your local community college on how to write a business plan may still be beneficial to you.

Which is why I wrote you a reply (that does not contain a single insult by the way), but does contain the rudiments of the things you need to consider in order to make a business work.

But I obviously wasted my time. You seem inclined to reject any of the actual advice given here by experienced people who have honest opinions and criticisms to offer, and in addition, attacked the people who have given the advice. This is not generally a recommended tactic to gain support and goodwill. Hopefully you will learn the important difference between a criticism and an insult before you have to talk to software executives and bankers.

I am happy for you that you found a programmer. I am apprehensive that the programmer is taking a risk but that's their gig.

And once you sell your 10,000th copy of the application, I will publicly apologise for doubting your idea, and I will buy your product myself.
im sure you will buy it long before then. before i go to bed though, i would like to say a bunch of things:

-Sorry to all about being a bit cocky.
-it was all in good fun, i just got a little carried away
-I am going to reject the person who volunteered to write this app
-I am going to stop hiding behind the fact that i am 13 years old
-Instead, i will learn objective c myself and write the app myself
-i have reconsidered and will likely take more like a year to make

i didn't tell people that im 13 y.o. because people usually don't take me seriously, and i suppose i understand that.

thank you feakbeak for all your support

if anyone is willing to donate thier time to the app, the idea is an application that will allow people without coding experience to develop full featured applications harnessing the power of objective c and cocoa. The advantages:

-a coder only needs to do the basics, then i can finish it off with the basics

-if the application itself fails, i can easily develop applications in my spare time with it, and that is how the developer would be repaid

what makes this possible is it's ingenious ui.

there is a big hole in the market there, because a lot of people want to create their own applications for thier own intrests, but don't have enough knowledge to do so. our competitors are realbasic, where they still need to learn code, same with supercard, any form of basic even. and thats it.

now make with the apologies people!! jk jk

big post.. time for sleep

[Diatribe]

The ground is littered with great ideas, programs superior to anything on the market, which although brilliant in concept and elegantly executed, never successfully sold.

*cough* Betamax *cough* :D

[feakbeak]

And once you sell your 10,000th copy of the application, I will publicly apologise for doubting your idea, and I will buy your product myself.I'll take this bet as well, but you better stick to the $199 price you told me. :)

[CanadaRAM]

I'll take this bet as well, but you better stick to the $199 price you told me. :)
I'll go with open pricing on this -- if he sells 10,000 it will have established a market value, and proven its popularity by then. In otherwords, the other 10,000 people wouldn't have bought if it were unrealistically priced.

[virus1]

btw guys.. dont make the app yourselves. if you want to use my idea, tell me and i will give u everything i have, in exchange for some money..

[jackieonasses]

He really didn't have to tell us he was 13.... You can tell by his posts...


He said he was rejecting the "programmer"

But a paragraph later he wants another human to do it..

confused.


kyle

[superbovine]

-a coder only needs to do the basics, then i can finish it off with the basics

-if the application itself fails, i can easily develop applications in my spare time with it, and that is how the developer would be repaid

what makes this possible is it's ingenious ui.

there is a big hole in the market there, because a lot of people want to create their own applications for thier own intrests, but don't have enough knowledge to do so. our competitors are realbasic, where they still need to learn code, same with supercard, any form of basic even. and thats it.

so you want to make an application that can make an open-ended scriptable type program using your "ingenious ui" without the user having to script anything, or have any knowledge about programming? something like automator, but in it's own runtime enviroment? assuming that is correct, your idea flawed. once you learn to program your'll realize that your solution won't work. you'd have to code for ever possibility of functionality whereas with scripting language it is open-ended with infinite solution possible. it something like automator. automator is limited to whatever people script for automator functionality.

[virus1]

He really didn't have to tell us he was 13.... You can tell by his posts...


He said he was rejecting the "programmer"

But a paragraph later he wants another human to do it..

confused.


kyle
he wanted money. i was asking for his donations. some couldn't tell i was 13.. so just saying.

[virus1]

so you want to make an application that can make an open-ended scriptable type program using your "ingenious ui" without the user having to script anything, or have any knowledge about programming? something like automator, but in it's own runtime enviroment? assuming that is correct, your idea flawed. once you learn to program your'll realize that your solution won't work. you'd have to code for ever possibility of functionality whereas with scripting language it is open-ended with infinite solution possible. it something like automator. automator is limited to whatever people script for automator functionality.
how can any language be open ended? are you saying that you can invent code for objective- c? that would be really cool, but i don't think it is possible. but yes, you do have the basic theory down right. i have it set up so whatever you can type, you can use the gui for.

[robbieduncan]

how can any language be open ended? are you saying that you can invent code for objective- c? that would be really cool, but i don't think it is possible. but yes, you do have the basic theory down right. i have it set up so whatever you can type, you can use the gui for.

Kind of like AppleScript then?

[gangst]

im sure you will buy it long before then. before i go to bed though, i would like to say a bunch of things:


-a coder only needs to do the basics, then i can finish it off with the basics

-if the application itself fails, i can easily develop applications in my spare time with it, and that is how the developer would be repaid

what makes this possible is it's ingenious ui.

there is a big hole in the market there, because a lot of people want to create their own applications for thier own intrests, but don't have enough knowledge to do so. our competitors are realbasic, where they still need to learn code, same with supercard, any form of basic even. and thats it.


Sorry....but your app sounds rubbish and how would you make money by creating more applicaations? Also how are developers going to trust a 13 year old kid.
You also say that theres a gap in the market for that kind of app, maybe there is, but I doubt people would bother writing programs when they can do a google search and find whaat they want.

Good luck, but if anyone wants to write a program for themselves surely they'd just use xcode.

PS. we've already got AppleScript and Automator (that has an ingenious ui lol)

[seamuskrat]

I gather it is more like a Codewarrior crossed with RealBasic for Cocoa. Certainly not a simple coding project for the weekend.

Even if it was as simple as RapidWeaver is for HTML, this undertaking would require extensive knowledge of the JUST completed Coca API and good coding experience, not skills associated with hobby programmer. Lastly, good program design begins in DESIGN. There seems to be minimal design as to how this app will interact with the OS.

I hate to be harsh, but I offered my services and I presume rejected due to realistic criticisms. What I suspect he wants is a huge undertaking. Bring programming to the masses, a la Hypercard in a simple quick cheap app. While I know for sure a working version of such a product would sell many copies, I feel that delving into a project with no planning, no roadmap and a part time coder is a waste of time for all involved.

As for him being 13. I was 13 when I wrote my first code. In fact, some of my code as a teenager was picked up by major companies ultimately. I even sold a few shareware titles back in the day. So I admire this users initiative and creative thinking. But I had hoped to save him some of the trouble I experienced with poorly planned apps and how to best approach a project.

Hopefully he will learn Cocoa and an IDE like XTools and take some classes in coding and write some good apps. Kind of like AppleScript then?

[superbovine]

how can any language be open ended? are you saying that you can invent code for objective- c? that would be really cool, but i don't think it is possible. but yes, you do have the basic theory down right. i have it set up so whatever you can type, you can use the gui for.

yeah, i did a research project, that i wrote my own language and grammar to create a 3D tree, that could be used to random generate a forrest. the parser was written in C++ using the opengl libraries. so yes, you can 'invent' a language using another language. you can also make libraries and extention for objective-c. my point is a programming language is open ended because it lets you have limitless possibilities on what you can create.

for example, english has words. words make sentences which are apart of a grammar. so any proper sentence within the english language is valid and there is almost endless possibilities for sentences. same goes for a computer languages.

as for your idea, your problem is you would still need to know programming. how would pressing a button on a gui to create a for loop, if statement, switch statement, while statement, pointers, variables, etc actually change if you used buttons on a gui even if some of it was pre-programmed in?

for example lets say you want to parse the xml document that contains your itunes library information with your program, and you want to convert it to CSV, or import it in mysql. is the user suppose click buttons on a gui do the properly logical statements to do that, or is the function suppose to preprogrammed and they just have to click and say "read in the xml file" and "export to mysql"? if it is the preprogrammed it would basically just like automator. on the other hand if it is where you click buttons to make program constructs, that is basically the same thing as programming isn't it?

[feakbeak]

yeah, i did a research project, that i wrote my own language and grammar to create a 3D tree, that could be used to random generate a forrest. the parser was written in C++ using the opengl libraries. so yes, you can 'invent' a language using another language. you can also make libraries and extention for objective-c. my point is a programming language is open ended because it lets you have limitless possibilities on what you can create.

for example, english has words. words make sentences which are apart of a grammar. so any proper sentence within the english language is valid and there is almost endless possibilities for sentences. same goes for a computer languages.

as for your idea, your problem is you would still need to know programming. how would pressing a button on a gui to create a for loop, if statement, switch statement, while statement, pointers, variables, etc actually change if you used buttons on a gui even if some of it was pre-programmed in?

for example lets say you want to parse the xml document that contains your itunes library information with your program, and you want to convert it to CSV, or import it in mysql. is the user suppose click buttons on a gui do the properly logical statements to do that, or is the functional suppose to preprogrammed and they just have to click and say "read in the xml file" and "export to mysql"? if it is the preprogrammed it would basically just like automator. on the other hand if it is where you click buttons to make program constructs, that is basically the same thing as programming isn't it?
Yes, I talked to virus1 about this quite a bit. He's got a general concept to make programming easy with GUI and everything. However, since he's not a programmer he doesn't understand all the complexities involved.

You either need to go the route of Automator and have everything trimmed down and pre-programmed otherwise you are essentially just creating yet another IDE for programmers. In doing something like Automator it is almost required that you limit the functionality of the actions, you don't offer end-users to tweak all of the details that might be related to a particular action. If you did you would need to create a UI that had a tremendous amount of options. If you did this all with preprogrammed functions it would be daunting to provide a library vast enough to give you the tools you would really need to develop a fully-developed application. If you tried to make a generic GUI and have the system libraries programmaticly translated... well that would be one hell of a technical feat that would require some damn good programming. I'm from the Windows side of programming and there are TypeLibs and stuff available to describe your COM objects and such but converting that into a sensible GUI for the end user is an insane task, IMO.

Anything in between Automator and generic IDE and you end up with something like Visual Basic, which is fine but there are several technologies available like this already and you still need to know a lot more about programming than the average consumer which is the market virus1 is targeting.

[superbovine]

You either need to go the route of Automator and have everything trimmed down and pre-programmed or otherwise you are essentially just creating yet another IDE for programmers. In doing something like Automator it is almost required that you limit the functionality of the actions, you don't offer end-users to tweak all of the details that might be related to a particular action. If you did you would need to create a UI that had a tremendous amount of options. If you did this all with preprogrammed functions it would be daunting to provide a library vast enough to give you the tools you would really need to develop a fully-developed application. If you tried to make a generic GUI and have the system libraries programmaticly translated... well that would be one hell of a technical feat that would require some damn good programming. I'm from the Windows side of programming and there are TypeLibs and stuff available to describe your COM objects and such but converting that into a sensible GUI for the end user is an insane task, IMO.

I think you are right, it would be an insane task. also, in my opinion if it could have been done it would have. i am sure he wasn't the first person to dabble on this idea, and if it showed any promise serious research would have been put into it.

[jeremy.king]

Good read, lots of action.

Moral of the story I took away: Yet another person (er kid) trivializing the art of software development.

[Thom_Edwards]

now that the mystery of what the application has been unshrouded, i think i'll chime in. i remember once thinking of a similar program, but nothing even close to the scope of what is being presented here. my idea (when i was about 15, if i remember correctly) was to construct a flowchart that would then become the actual code automatically. it would have drag-n-drop flowchart symbols, each having appropriate attributes, that could be connected to form the logic and flow.

when i thought of it, it sounded great. me and my buddy talked about it at great length. that was, however, before either of us knew what it really meant to program. sure, it *might* have been possible for the programs we were writing at the time (which were simple BASIC apps, nothing even closely resembling a modern application written with an oop language), but *anything* past that would be impossible. i think that once you learn to program, you will realize the magnitude of the project.

so, good thinking, virus. it's good to have ideas and have creative thoughts, even when they don't always work out. but it's definitely a no-go. just as others have said, it just wouldn't work, especially for a hobbyist to complete in a few months. also, if it were such a marketable and doable application, i feel someone would have done it by now. the idea has been around for at least 20 years that i'm aware of. :)

[jestershinra]

It's very hard to be young and want to do things. People automatically assume that you're immature and incapable of working hard. When I was 13, I took the initiative and got a job doing computer repair. I worked hard at work, and hard at home expanding my knowledge. While I wasn't the most knowledgeable guy at the office, I was certainly not the least. Now, 2+ years later, I'm making a good bit more in an office than I was when I started working, and I make good money doing freelance/independent computer repair/training, etc. When you're 15, $35-50 (depending on the customer) is pretty good money, seeing as I don't have a ton of overhead, aside from geek stuff. I get a nice tax refund too, because I don't work enough for it to be qualified as full time, year round.

The point of this story is that I feel for the OP, and I completely understand why he didn't originally post his age. Setting aside his business plan for a moment, how many of you would honestly think about doing a project for pay for a 13 year old? Had his posts and business plan been more together, he might have gotten a better response.

To the OP- in theory, and application like that would be a godsend for the masses; it would help people with little or no coding knowledge be extremely productive. In practice, though, it doesn't seem feasible. The sheer coding knowledge to do something like that would be rare. As other have said, you'd need to program for an extremely large number of actions. This has been tried by, and I mean no disrespect by this, people and companies with more resources and coding talent than you have at your disposal, and hasn't really caught on in the general population. Automator is looking to change that, but whether that will work remains to be seen.

I'll wrap this up now. virus1, don't get too discouraged. You had a good idea, but it just isn't feasible. Continue your learning and continue to further your knowledge, though. You never know what opportunities may present themselves if you are knowledgeable.

[jeremy.king]

... how many of you would honestly think about doing a project for pay for a 13 year old?

Well, pay is pay, so I am guessing had he offered money up front, his age would be irrelevant. Most people I know work for money.

Had his posts and business plan been more together, he might have gotten a better response...

This is true and his posts were indicative of his level of expertise and experience causing many to be cautious. A little more education, preparation, and experience will come with time.

[virus1]

It's very hard to be young and want to do things. People automatically assume that you're immature and incapable of working hard. When I was 13, I took the initiative and got a job doing computer repair. I worked hard at work, and hard at home expanding my knowledge. While I wasn't the most knowledgeable guy at the office, I was certainly not the least. Now, 2+ years later, I'm making a good bit more in an office than I was when I started working, and I make good money doing freelance/independent computer repair/training, etc. When you're 15, $35-50 (depending on the customer) is pretty good money, seeing as I don't have a ton of overhead, aside from geek stuff. I get a nice tax refund too, because I don't work enough for it to be qualified as full time, year round.

The point of this story is that I feel for the OP, and I completely understand why he didn't originally post his age. Setting aside his business plan for a moment, how many of you would honestly think about doing a project for pay for a 13 year old? Had his posts and business plan been more together, he might have gotten a better response.

To the OP- in theory, and application like that would be a godsend for the masses; it would help people with little or no coding knowledge be extremely productive. In practice, though, it doesn't seem feasible. The sheer coding knowledge to do something like that would be rare. As other have said, you'd need to program for an extremely large number of actions. This has been tried by, and I mean no disrespect by this, people and companies with more resources and coding talent than you have at your disposal, and hasn't really caught on in the general population. Automator is looking to change that, but whether that will work remains to be seen.

I'll wrap this up now. virus1, don't get too discouraged. You had a good idea, but it just isn't feasible. Continue your learning and continue to further your knowledge, though. You never know what opportunities may present themselves if you are knowledgeable.
you'd all be suprised what a bored teenager can do in a summer vacation. i can probably program the basics by august. and of course begin more explanations of why i can't do it.. listen people. I will have to learn this lesson solo people..

[jestershinra]

you'd all be suprised what a bored teenager can do in a summer vacation. i can probably program the basics by august. and of course begin more explanations of why i can't do it.. listen people. I will have to learn this lesson solo people..

*laughs*

Virus1, I think you misunderstand me. I know full well what someone can do in a summer, I gained a large amount of knowledge in one summer, and I'm sure you can too. Good luck with it.

[jsw]

you'd all be suprised what a bored teenager can do in a summer vacation. i can probably program the basics by august. and of course begin more explanations of why i can't do it.. listen people. I will have to learn this lesson solo people..
Best of luck. Really.

I hope it works out, and, if you spend the summer on this, you'll undoubtedly come out of it with something of value, in terms of experience and quite possibly in terms of an application.

[sigamy]

Yes, I talked to virus1 about this quite a bit. He's got a general concept to make programming easy with GUI and everything. However, since he's not a programmer he doesn't understand all the complexities involved.

You either need to go the route of Automator and have everything trimmed down and pre-programmed otherwise you are essentially just creating yet another IDE for programmers. In doing something like Automator it is almost required that you limit the functionality of the actions, you don't offer end-users to tweak all of the details that might be related to a particular action. If you did you would need to create a UI that had a tremendous amount of options. If you did this all with preprogrammed functions it would be daunting to provide a library vast enough to give you the tools you would really need to develop a fully-developed application. If you tried to make a generic GUI and have the system libraries programmaticly translated... well that would be one hell of a technical feat that would require some damn good programming. I'm from the Windows side of programming and there are TypeLibs and stuff available to describe your COM objects and such but converting that into a sensible GUI for the end user is an insane task, IMO.

Anything in between Automator and generic IDE and you end up with something like Visual Basic, which is fine but there are several technologies available like this already and you still need to know a lot more about programming than the average consumer which is the market virus1 is targeting.

Exactly.

I really don't see this as a huge groundbreaking app/tool. There are very few people who want to write their own app or develop their own software. Even if all it takes is simple point and click or drag and drop type stuff, regular people don't care. They run existing apps, which cover 95% of their needs.

If the OP was thinking this would be good for kids and hobbists I just don't know. We already have RealBasic, Automator, AppleScript and AppleScript Studio. You can build some really nice apps with these with an intermediate level of knowledge and training.

This type of app is more suited to web development where the list of potential needs is much smaller. Even here there are already plenty of these on the market in RapidWeaver, Freeway, even Dreamweaver.

virus1, I think you should take your idea and really change the focus to work with Automator. Automator is brand new and not many people have even played with it yet. There are a few resource sites online now. Maybe you can join one of those, or even start your own portal site.

You can try to build a community of people writting Automator Actions. I used Automator to grab my bank balance online, but I had to do more than half of it in AppleScript because of Automator's limitations. It would be great for people to start extending Automator. Build tons of MS Office Actions, Photoshop, iLife, etc. Things that will be useful to large user bases. If you site catches on you can become the #1 resource for one of Mac OS X's newest features. This could be big and benefit tons of users and maybe someday even profitable.

[gangst]

Good luck, you may be the next Bill Gates. lol.

[Omen88]

yeah, i did a research project, that i wrote my own language and grammar to create a 3D tree, that could be used to random generate a forrest. the parser was written in C++ using the opengl libraries. so yes, you can 'invent' a language using another language. you can also make libraries and extention for objective-c. my point is a programming language is open ended because it lets you have limitless possibilities on what you can create.

You can even make a programming language which interprets/compiles the same programming language. That's called meta-circular evaluation. Expressive languages, like Scheme have that.

[Omen88]

now that the mystery of what the application has been unshrouded, i think i'll chime in. i remember once thinking of a similar program, but nothing even close to the scope of what is being presented here. my idea (when i was about 15, if i remember correctly) was to construct a flowchart that would then become the actual code automatically. it would have drag-n-drop flowchart symbols, each having appropriate attributes, that could be connected to form the logic and flow.

when i thought of it, it sounded great. me and my buddy talked about it at great length. that was, however, before either of us knew what it really meant to program. sure, it *might* have been possible for the programs we were writing at the time (which were simple BASIC apps, nothing even closely resembling a modern application written with an oop language), but *anything* past that would be impossible. i think that once you learn to program, you will realize the magnitude of the project.

so, good thinking, virus. it's good to have ideas and have creative thoughts, even when they don't always work out. but it's definitely a no-go. just as others have said, it just wouldn't work, especially for a hobbyist to complete in a few months. also, if it were such a marketable and doable application, i feel someone would have done it by now. the idea has been around for at least 20 years that i'm aware of. :)

I remember when I was very young my father had a book of a program which did just that on the Mac. It was called VIP (can't remember what it stood for). It must been a program of somewhere around 1988. You drew flowcharts on it, and it executed your program.

[Omen88]

And something slightly more off-topic.

Does anyone remember Game Builder or World Builder. It allowed you to create your own adventure games without programming. It was also something from the late 80's on the mac in black and white.

God the fun I had with that...

My friends were never that impressed with my creations though.

[virus1]

And something slightly more off-topic.

Does anyone remember Game Builder or World Builder. It allowed you to create your own adventure games without programming. It was also something from the late 80's on the mac in black and white.

God the fun I had with that...

My friends were never that impressed with my creations though.
my friends are all really hyped up on two programs called game maker and fusion. they allow them to create games really easily. they were able to create a 2d fps in about 30 min.. and they are not programmers or anything..

[DavidLeblond]

my friends are all really hyped up on two programs called game maker and fusion. they allow them to create games really easily. they were able to create a 2d fps in about 30 min.. and they are not programmers or anything..

2d FPS? Is that like Doom in a very narrow hallway?

J/k I know what you're talking about. I remember the days of editing the sprites in Wolfenstein frame by frame. Making "ghost guards" by painting their faces purple. Ah, memories.

[mj_1903]

my friends are all really hyped up on two programs called game maker and fusion. they allow them to create games really easily. they were able to create a 2d fps in about 30 min.. and they are not programmers or anything..

Those applications are very rigid with regards to what you can create. Set rules, set objects, set motions and set game dynamics. You definitely can't create anything original with them except maybe with regards to graphics.

As for the idea, programming is too open-ended to create an application that can create 95% of other applications. That's why a programming environment like Cocoa is made up of thousands of little blocks that can be morphed into a big comprehensive block. Automator on the other hand is dozens of big blocks that can be roughly assembled into a chain but not into something useful to all. It might cover 50% of cases but that leaves the other 50% for true programs.

Oh, by the way, I started out programming at 14 (currently 20) and after spending 6 months developing Connoissuer (along with 2 employees) I can assure you that your project is not something that can be done by one person in a summer let alone one person who has still not grasped the fundamentals of Cocoa/OOP.

As an example, this (http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/software/connoisseur/screenshots/importrecipe.png) function took 2 weeks of solid programming and bug testing to get to a 95% standard. It does basic language parsing to read in recipes in different formats pretty similar to what you will be doing with code except recipes all have a relatively standard format.

[virus1]

Those applications are very rigid with regards to what you can create. Set rules, set objects, set motions and set game dynamics. You definitely can't create anything original with them except maybe with regards to graphics.

As for the idea, programming is too open-ended to create an application that can create 95% of other applications. That's why a programming environment like Cocoa is made up of thousands of little blocks that can be morphed into a big comprehensive block. Automator on the other hand is dozens of big blocks that can be roughly assembled into a chain but not into something useful to all. It might cover 50% of cases but that leaves the other 50% for true programs.

Oh, by the way, I started out programming at 14 (currently 20) and after spending 6 months developing Connoissuer (along with 2 employees) I can assure you that your project is not something that can be done by one person in a summer let alone one person who has still not grasped the fundamentals of Cocoa/OOP.

As an example, this (http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/software/connoisseur/screenshots/importrecipe.png) function took 2 weeks of solid programming and bug testing to get to a 95% standard. It does basic language parsing to read in recipes in different formats pretty similar to what you will be doing with code except recipes all have a relatively standard format.listen guys.. i told you i am going to have to learn this by myself. parsing as i understand it is pretty complicated. i will not attempt to incorperate parsing in the first summer of work. guys if you remember, pm me at the end of the summer to see how it went. its not oop i have problems with, it is the more advanced concepts of cocoa. and i will tell you again, my app will be able to do everything xcode can, because it has cocoa built right into it.

[Wyrm]

Does anyone remember Game Builder or World Builder. It allowed you to create your own adventure games without programming. It was also something from the late 80's on the mac in black and white.
God the fun I had with that...
My friends were never that impressed with my creations though.

You can relive those memories: http://we.got.net/~mapman/wb/

Har har har. :D
(well, for about 5 minutes anyways)

I remember seeing a visual programming tool from National Instruments where you dragged programming *points* (decisions, loops, etc) from a toolkit to make a program visually. It was for their data capture boards, so very domain specific, but pretty slick nonetheless.

Good luck virus1, just make sure it is Turing complete (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_complete) and you check BOTH the PowerPC and Intel targets for your universal binary. :rolleyes:

-Wyrm

[Shaun.P]

don't forgot knows nothing about the software developement cycle.

I live in Scotland and have done Higher Computing. is this ADITDEM (Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing, Documentation, Evaluation and Maintenance?)

[superbovine]

I live in Scotland and have done Higher Computing. is this ADITDEM (Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing, Documentation, Evaluation and Maintenance?)


yes

[mj_1903]

and i will tell you again, my app will be able to do everything xcode can, because it has cocoa built right into it.

Just like Preview can do everything Xcode can because it has Cocoa built in, right? What does having Cocoa built in mean anyway? :-/

[virus1]

Just like Preview can do everything Xcode can because it has Cocoa built in, right? What does having Cocoa built in mean anyway? :-/
i mean into the scripting environment..

[Flowbee]

So summer vacation is over... let's have an update.

[ham_man]

im sure you will buy it long before then. before i go to bed though, i would like to say a bunch of things:

-Sorry to all about being a bit cocky.
-it was all in good fun, i just got a little carried away
-I am going to reject the person who volunteered to write this app
-I am going to stop hiding behind the fact that i am 13 years old
-Instead, i will learn objective c myself and write the app myself
-i have reconsidered and will likely take more like a year to make

i didn't tell people that im 13 y.o. because people usually don't take me seriously, and i suppose i understand that.

thank you feakbeak for all your support

if anyone is willing to donate thier time to the app, the idea is an application that will allow people without coding experience to develop full featured applications harnessing the power of objective c and cocoa. The advantages:

-a coder only needs to do the basics, then i can finish it off with the basics

-if the application itself fails, i can easily develop applications in my spare time with it, and that is how the developer would be repaid

what makes this possible is it's ingenious ui.

there is a big hole in the market there, because a lot of people want to create their own applications for thier own intrests, but don't have enough knowledge to do so. our competitors are realbasic, where they still need to learn code, same with supercard, any form of basic even. and thats it.

now make with the apologies people!! jk jk

big post.. time for sleep
*muffled laughter*

So how did your coding go?

*muffled laughter*

Ahhh...who am I kidding?

*full blown gut busting laughter*

Programming an app like RealBasic for something as complicated as Cocoa and Obj-C is not a summer project. Hell, I studied C for 3 weeks and the best I could do was make a calculator...

[jestershinra]

Dude- don't be a dick. He got the message...

[jamdr]

I just finished reading the entire thread for the first time and I have to say I am quite astonished by how kind MR members were to this kid. Programmers are usually huge arrogant pricks (I was a former cs major :cool: ) but it seems like the ones on this board actually tried to provide a little guidance for this kid and didn't scorn him too badly.

I once had a similiar idea and tried to implement it in HyperCard back when I was only 13 or so. I actually ended up with a pretty cool program (as I remember it) but I never finished it 100% because I started to move on to real languages and the world suddenly got a lot more complicated :D. I do hope he really did try to program it himself this summer, because that would provide a lot of valuable experience. Although I agree that a program that could do everything he wanted would be virtually impossible to create, even for a team of very talented programmers, and even harder to market. I think that's why HyperCard ultimately failed. However, it would be an interesting project to work on, nonetheless.

[macbaseball]

I just finished reading the entire thread for the first time and I have to say I am quite astonished by how kind MR members were to this kid. Programmers are usually huge arrogant pricks (I was a former cs major :cool: ) but it seems like the ones on this board actually tried to provide a little guidance for this kid and didn't scorn him too badly.

I agree. I read this thread months ago, and I immediately remembered it when it popped up today. This thread was totally harsh to someone who was just trying to get someone to create his idea...

[Rod Rod]

I just bought Cocoa for Dummies. Maybe I'll do this for a summer project in 2006. j.k. about taking on the project, but the other day I really did buy Cocoa for Dummies.

[Flowbee]

I didn't revive this thread to add any more insult to injury. I'm just interested to know if the OP has continued to pursue this project and what he has learned along the way.