Windows Apps
Here are samples of my work: developing Windows apps.
7stacks
7stacks
Around 2008, OS X debuted a feature called Stacks, which allowed an entire folder of icons to be placed in the OS X dock into a single icon. It was a great way to keep the dock from getting too cluttered with icons.
So, when Windows 7 was released, with its taskbar that clearly "borrowed" from Apple, I had one of those 💡 moments: "Why doesn't Windows have Stacks?" After checking around that no one had made this, I knew I had to make it myself.
As a design choice, I could've just recreated the look of Stacks in Win7, but to me that was boring and derivative. I wanted 7stacks to have that functionality, but look like Win7. 7stacks was my magnum opus of Windows UI development. It utilized all that I had learned to make it's glassy, semi-translucent appearance perfectly match the design aesthetic of Win7.
7stacks ended up being my most popular app. It received tens of millions of downloads, and was mentioned in numerous podcasts, Youtube videos, blogs, forums, and even a few magazines. Go ahead, just google 7stacks. You'll find a lot of people still use it, and email me about it!
Speedy Shopper
Speedy Shopper
Like many good ideas, Speedy Shopper was borne out of experience. When I tried to do grocery shopping, the only shopping list apps were designed for what I'd call "casual" shoppers: Those who grab a few things to complete a recipe, and never buy on sale, use coupons, or store food long term. IMO, the "real" way to shop was to buy in-bulk or buy on sale, utilize freezers and pantries, and have lots of coupons. For this, there was no shopping list app at all.
At it's core, Speedy Shopper is built around a simple idea: completing a shopping trip as quickly as possible. The idea is you'd have a master list of items for a given store, you'd add stuff to a shopping list from that item list. But the great innovation was that it sorted your shopping list by aisle. This means that as you go around the store, you'd check off items in order.
From there, features for the power shopper were added over time. SS can handle temporary sales, coupons (from both manufacturer and store), double- and triple-coupon periods, price estimates, and more. It also used a custom AI element to analyze how often you purchased an item to suggest that item might be running low. It could also show price trends of each item over time, even across multiple stores.
About my Windows development
Back in the day, I created Windows apps for Alastria Software. I created these apps using an integrated development environment (IDE) called Delphi, originally made by Borland and since purchased by Embarcadero. Delphi apps are coded in a the seemingly forgotten language of Pascal, and indeed Delphi and its open-source equivalent Lazarus, are about the only two IDEs that use Pascal. But it's their loss. While not in high demand, Pascal is an almost perfect language to me: it's human-readable to English speakers, very strongly-typed, and object-oriented.
Unfortunately, the market for small-fry developers moved completely away from Windows in the mid-2010's. App developers just couldn't make enough for a living any more. Largely everyone moved to Android or iOS development. And demand for Delphi developers dropped as well. It was fun while it lasted!
My time as an app developer taught me a lot. For instance, I learned about the software development cycle, and setting and hitting release dates. I learned about customer service, and how to truly practice patience. I learned a lot about UI/UX design as well; that your designs must always give users a helping hand if they need it, and get out of their way if they don't.
But more than anything, I recall this era fondly because I was a full-time coder. That's what I've always loved doing.