Welcome to the new year.

No resoutions for me, just getting ready for a new baby at the end of Feb.

Now, on to the second of the four parts.  Software that no one uses but me.

Now that might not sound like much.  But in fact, I think this is the largest category of software in the world.  Want to know why?

Because included in this category is every little spreadsheet, database, and wordprocessing document or template with embedded scripting that anyone ever wrote to make their job easier.

And if I told you that number, it would probably make you disbelieve me.  And in fact there are features still built into Excel simply because Wall Street firms have been using them for years, and threaten to move to something else if they have to go and rewrite it (though maybe that might have helped prevent some of the meltdown we had).

But I can give you are real example.  I did an analysis project for a company, it turns over something in excess of $2,000,000,000 (yes, that is 9 zeros there) each year (not bad for a privately owned firm), and 90% of their business is driven by spreadsheets.

We found 40,000 spreadsheets on their network.  Which means each spreadsheet had an average value of $50,000 per YEAR.  Of course, half of those were things like the default Excel templates, and the new document option for the right click menu in explorer, so that really means that they had 20,000 spreadsheets with a value of $100,000 per year.

In truth of course, 90% of those spreadsheets are old, and probably worth something between nothing, and maybe $10,000, but a few were worth over $10,000,000.  The project was to identify them, and plan a way to put some controls and structure around them.

 But anyway, this is what "exemplifies" software that someone builds for themselves.

• Not flexible
• Only one way to perform any action
• Does only one or two things, but does them exactly
• Frequently requires "tweaks" to the code
• Doesn't crash if you make one of your common mistakes, but heaven help you if you do something really weird
• Only one person really understands it

Often these pieces of software evolve over time to become the central core of a business process.  And trouble sets in when the original creator leaves, because no one else understands it, and everyone is afraid to change it.

 Next up, software written for a single business or group (bespoke software)

Wow.  Nearly 2 years since I last posted.  I have been really slack.  Ah well, time to get back into it I guess.

 So, I was busy learning to tap dance.  Long story, something my wife wanted to learn.  Oh, and as an aside, learning new stuff is good for your brain.  In this case, figuring out just how horrible I was at learning a new skill got me to thinking about the four different types of software we commonly write.  Well, more like styles really.

So this is going to be the first of the four.  Software for learning purposes.

That is, the software we write when we are trying to figure stuff out.  Like at university, we had this assignment to write a program that could solve the "Towers of Hanoi" as an example of recursion.

And an hour before the assignment was due, I had this 500 line program full of messy special cases and weirdness and it mostly worked, and suddenly it clicked.  Thirty minutes after that, I had a 33 line program that was perfect.

Or when I was figuring out how to read and write lists from SharePoint using the web services.

You write this messy code, and it has all these hard coded pieces in it, the URL, the name of the list, the values you want to add or delete.

And this is the software we write when we are learning stuff.  It does these very narrow specific things, it doesn't cope with anything that deviates from the expected.  Every time you want to change what it does, you have to change the code.

This is all good for figuring stuff out, but it is completely useless for giving to someone else.

Next up, software for ourselves.  The software we write to use for ourself and no one else.

I should introduce myself.  After all, it's always good to know something about someone you'd like to get to know better.  Which I would hope you do.

My name is Roger Willcocks.  I live in Auckland, New Zealand.  Manukau City to be precise.  About 30 km south of Mark Joyner of Simpleology and Sean D'Souza.  I'm married, with (currently) a two-year old daughter.  I roleplay, read fantasy, and sometimes do work around the house.

More to the point.  What do I know about writing and selling software?  Well, I first wrote games from magazines on my Atari 400, way back in 1980.  I graduated to an Apple IIe, which was what I used until I started University in 1992. 

My first piece of commercial software was written in 1993 working in a kumara packhouse over the Christmas holidays.  It was written in MS Access 2.0, and apart from having been upgraded to Access 2000, is still being used today.  They tried moving to the industry standard software package, and found that it would cost them an EXTRA $50,000 to get the modifications they needed, so they stayed put.

My second piece of software was written for my mothers child care centre in 1994.  It cut her paperwork requirement down from 20 hours per week (mostly on the weekend), to around 40 minutes per week.  They used that up until 2 years ago, when someone accidentally deleted the data files without a backup while making room for MYOB, and decided to move to their industry standard application instead.

So, I can write software that does what people need.  It saves them time, money and pain.  If you can solve any one of those problems, you can sell it.  If you can solve two or more, you have a product with a LOT of potential.

I currently have around 14 MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) certificates, covering 5 different areas of specialisation.  I've written software for websites, freight companies, law firms, charities, other software companies, CRM systems.  So I have breadth of experience.

But this is what I need to teach you for you to be able to do what I do.

• Find someone who needs what you can offer
• Plan it out
• Create it
• Help people find it 
• Deliver it
• Repeat