A quick reader’s guide: Release It!, by Michael T. Nygard
There are days when I believe that anyone can develop a web app. But even when I’m willing to go that far, I’m never prepared to say that anyone can deploy reliable software. There are questions of scaling, user-generated errors and a plenty of problems waiting whenever an application has to function in the real world. Release It! is a practical guide to making sure that your software can actually survive in the real world, though, and it will leave you properly paranoid about how you write your applications in the future.
Nygard takes a ground up approach, teaching readers how to design applications to avoid key issues in the first place. The chapters are laid out with case studies of specific errors, paired with solutions. However, don’t expect this book to do the work for you. There are minimal code snippets included and those are only meant as examples.
Development: Forth Warrior
According to the readme, Forth Warrior is “a game of programming, stabbing and low cunning.” It doubles as a fun way to practice using your knowledge of Forth. There are a few similar games out there for other languages, too.
Funding: Think your investors are being difficult? Read this.
The mind of an investor is a mysterious place, but the better you can understand it, the more likely that you can recognize when your interests and an investor’s are very different. After all, investors and entrepreneurs can have very different goals for the same business.
Operations: Decoding the deadpool: How to tell when a startup has failed
Startups grow quickly, but they can also fail quickly. It’s hard to tell just when a startup is done, which in turn makes it easier for accelerators, investors and other folks with stakes in different startups to paint rosier pictures of their own success.
Marketing: The app stores are getting full: Only 2 percent of iPhone top publishers in U.S. are newcomers, 3 percent on Google Play
You can’t just build a mobile app and slap it into the appropriate app store — even if once, very long ago, that was enough to get you a few purchases, it’s not nearly enough now. There is major competition that you have to be aware of and that you must address as you’re planning your marketing efforts.
Beyond Tech: How (and why) to intentionally set yourself up for failure
We learn much more from failures than from successes. Provided you can create a safe environment in which to fail, setting yourself up so that you can’t easily succeed — at least immediately — guarantees that lessons will stick with you.
Our most popular link this week: Checking your security isn’t a once-in-a-while thing
