On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 12:36:09PM -0700, Nate Graham wrote: > I know, my answer sucks. I really do hate to have to bring it up. And I > don't mean to throw cold water on your project or your enthusiasm! KSnip > looks cool. > > The thing is, single-developer projects tend to have a predictable > lifecycle: lots of energy and progress in the beginning, then around > year two or three, the developer loses interest or gets too busy, and > then the app stagnates for a few years and finally dies of bit-rot. It > isn't *always* the case, but I've seen it too many times to ignore the > pattern.
Even when it doesn't happen, it's often close to happening to even the projects that do survive. E.g. JuK has nearly died for this reason 2 or 3 times now. Each time a hero swooped in out of nowhere to push JuK to where it needed to be so we could keep it going, but I just want to pound on this as being a legit concern, especially for single developer apps. No matter how noble your intentions at the beginning it is very difficult to chain yourself to an application in the long term. The bug reports pile up, you develop new interests as the larger tech ecosystems expand (e.g. when wheels started JuK, AWS was still 5-6 years away), and usually your free time goes down as you get older, especially if you get a "significant other" or even children. Regards, - Michael Pyne
