The fun and folly of embarking on a new coding project

I am in the market for a new software tool say, everyone from Microsoft to the nice Opensource folks make something that satisfies a part of what I need: no one works at even 50% of what I want. What does one do ? I am prepared to pay for good stuff: Mindmanager, Bluebeam PDF etc are excellent tools on my tablet and I paid for them. Lightroom is another beautifully crafted software application I have no issues paying for. However, paying for crap (especially if I can do without it) is something I cannot do.

So what does one do ? A total geek like me would think, "Hey, nice non-trivial project to sink my teeth into" and then quickly proceed to sit back and dream of the final kudos I would receive. I have found my dip and by Thor, I am going to cross it. Waves back to the suckers across the dip, hah.

But wait: what if there is reason no one is making the kind of software I want. Is there no market for it ? Will it function horrendously once I lay down the code to build my requirements palace ? did someone actually do the smart thing and run this by users to see if there is a market ? Experience has taught me to be choose humility and my boss taught me spend time asking more questions. Apparently there is always another angle to look at things. Hmm.. wonder what Apple thought about the iPhone and why no one thought about touch based UIs ? Nah.. maybe most of the software companies are producing mediocre stuff because they don't have someone particularly OCD/Anal enough nagging them with "still not right. see, this is crap".

In any case, I have this wonderful cop out, "It will be a learning experience" and all I will be wasting is the one things that will turn out to be the most precious: my time.Gah..

The optimistic code monkey marches on. May the banana (hindi pun intended) gods prevent the peels from getting underfoot.