September 09, 2007
This is the first diary entry (in the category FBappdevdiary) that will be directly related to my journey towards a successful Facebook application. This journey will yield tales of successes, frustrations, confusion and battles with bureaucracy. I won’t reveal the exact nature of my planned Facebook application until the latter stages of development and deployment. I believe, however, that this secrecy will produce useful generic information for readers.
I have mixed emotions as I embark on the uphill climb towards successful Facebook application development.
I’m humbled by the vast amount of skill and application innovation being applied today by, let’s face it, younger developers who have a fifth of my years of experience in the IT industry. I was an avid application developer a few years ago before career advancements into senior consulting roles took away most opportunities for hands-on development. Tools at my disposal at that time included Clipper, FoxPro, dBase and Visual Basic. At the time, object oriented programming was not yet mainstream. Some of these statements really date me don’t they?
I’m confident that my years as a technical architect will pay off in spades since this experience has taught me to document and plan before coding. I’ll need to strike an appropriate balance between this approach and that used by my son (who is also my web development coach). There will be some pain and hopefully constructive compromise as he is an exceptionally fast web developer and prototyper.
I’m excited to be learning so much at such a rapid pace with a vast number of online resources to aid my research.
I’m disappointed, however, at the lack of complete, from-the-ground-up, reference material addressing all the questions that a developer will have. Most online resources emphasize a specific piece of the puzzle while assuming the reader has various other skills and experience. This situation makes it difficult to be productive in a short period of time.
I’m overwhelmed at the sheer number of inter-related technologies,topics, tools and approaches. I know that I need to be organized and persistent in order to break through.
I’m encouraged by the acceleration of my accumulation of knowledge on literally dozens of topics that were, a mere ten days ago, vague concepts that I had heard about but not explored. From the perspective of the human learning experience, fear of the unknown gradually disappears through research, study and brute force trial and error.
I’m scared, but just a little. On one hand, I have made a personal commitment to develop and launch a Facebook application. To provide some necessary positive pressure, I have told several friends and relatives of my plans. On another front, I am afraid that someone may have the same idea for my planned Facebook application and beat me to market with it.I know that hope is not a strategy, but I’m hopeful that you will stay with me as this Facebook application takes on form and function. I’m counting on commentary from readers to keep me on track, efficient and thorough in my strategy, architecture, design, coding and implementation activities. It should be an interesting ride!
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