Another question from a software developer:

As a one-person independent software developer, what are the major challenges you faced? How did you
overcome these challenges?

There was a time before the internet, yes, even before it was still ‘The Internet’, when being a one-person development company meant you worked alone. Wrote code, wrote letters to customers, on actual paper and snail mail, did your own artwork, everything. The result was a very real reluctance to allow ANY part of a project to be done elsewhere.

That’s over. Now, our programs & apps have to run alongside other programs, share data with other users of the same apps, check for updates, sell upgrades (and power-ups), and be visually stunning and immediately obvious to use without a bound instruction manual. It’s too much. You can’t do that alone; you can’t even visualize it without loads of feedback from experts in each area.

We can outsource graphics. Or web sites, animation, speech recording, writing, even blocks of code, if it gets the project done. Now, it’s a management job, rather than doing every little piece of the project in-house. You don’t need employees, but you do need trusted partners to do the tasks you will (reluctantly) admit that you can’t do yourself in a reasonable time. Or just don’t wanna.

So does that mean hire outsource help? You could. Or if you work with other programmers, or know programmers from the ASP, you can offer to trade technical expertise for help in other areas.

Jerry Stern
Chief Technology Officer, PC410.com