... a perfect setup for a blog post from a Code Monkey!
So periodically across the various iOS web forums various posters begin moaning about their lack of ideas for new mobile applications. I have never understood either the point of these posts or the method behind them. Yes, once upon a time I was a child who would bother my parents with cries of "there's nothing do" when there was truly a vast world open for experience not more than a few yards outside ... youth is wasted upon the young. How can a person lack an idea for development?
Posting snarky responses to these complaints was always fun, but I'd usually also open up my grab-bag-o'-stupidity and throw out a few of the ideas contained therein. True, some of them were truly useless, such as the shoe-sizer estimator app - snap a pic of your foot and it calculates your shoe size! - but perhaps a few ideas had merit.
I think the real complaint, never expressly stated, was that the original poster wanted an app idea as successful as Angry Birds and as easy to code as Tic-Tac-Toe (though other posters seem to have inordinate trouble with TTT too!). With Tetris and PacMan already taken, though, I could only leave our angst-ridden posters disappointed.
And yet this idea that the IDEA is all-encompassing seems quite misplaced. It's not - success requires hard work and there aren't any shortcuts. Defining success as a $100B Facebook evaluation seems misplaced and pointless - that level isn't going to happen to a lot of people. But success in terms of a good salary, a good life, and enough toys to stay happy? Seems easy enough.
Of course, if there's an excessive valuation on the IDEA of the idea, then I'd be a foolish monkey not to capitalize. As the stock market always teaches - there's bound to be a bigger fool out there somewhere (note: if you can't spot him - tag!).
So I've got about 50 ideas sitting here on my desk gathering dust. That's easily going to make 50 more blog posts. And with a few more days of thought I can push that number up to the magical 101 - and then I've got a book.
Heck, in my time I've bought more than my share of "101 Circuit Diagrams", "The Engineer's Mini-Notebook", "Make", etc. It's rather embarrassing, really - shameful. It seems to be a successful bandwagon, though - watch this monkey grab his cymbals and bang!
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