It's a classic line from Field of Dreams, and it happens to be true for software development.
I have a small app on Google Play Store. As of now, less than a 1000 people have even tried the app. Despite the humble statistics, I've begun to get more and more inquiries about the app.
They are coming. Who are they, you may ask. Well, here is what I've been seeing so far.
Clients. I've had some bad and some good feedback. Once, someone told me that the app was crashing and how to reproduce the crash. I immediately (well, in the next few days), worked on the fix and thanked them for the help. The best feedback is when I hear of new features to implement. It's great to know that you are building something that matters.
Promoters. (Scammers?) Since the moment of my initial publish, there have been people asking me if I'd like my app reviewed by them. They'd promote my app, and I'm not sure what I'd have to do for them. This always felt disingenuous to me. If you want to review my app, you certainly don't need my permission to do so. I'm not sure if all of these solicitations were actual scams, but it's best to be cautious with these sort of things, so I typically just didn't reply to these folks.
Developers. Other developers have asked me if they might build some new feature for me. This is cool. In true open-source fashion, the project takes a life of its own and is built by a community. But this is a project that I'd like to build. I fear that I give others access to the code to build on and bug fix, I'd end up maintaining more than building. I guess I haven't fully adopted the open source spirit.
It's pretty cool that I can work on something at home and then generate interest from people all over the world. It motivates me to keep building, as it accumulates to be something that can take a life of its own.
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