Inspiration
What is the best tool you have used to help with day to day work?
My most constant tool has been BBEdit. I’ve been a BBEdit user since version 2 — which must have been about 20 years ago. Great app, great company.
A close runner-up is MarsEdit, which must be going on 12 years old now. I write my blog entirely in MarsEdit.
Another important tool is Slack. I keep it open on my Mac. I hate the app so very, very much — but it’s also great. If only it weren’t a webview wrapper. Ugh.
What else do you consider “great apps”?
Outside of mine and Omni’s apps:
Who do you look up to? Who do you consider a success, either in our industry or otherwise?
My heroes when I was getting started were Mac developers in the ’90s: Dave Winer, Peter Lewis, Mark Alldritt, Chuck Shotton, Rich Siegel, and a few others. I wanted to do what they did.
I’m not sure that there’s anyone I “look up” to these days, not exactly — but there are a ton of developers I respect. Many of them are my friends, though certainly not all. The list isn’t limited to the people I follow on Twitter, but that’s a good place to start.
I consider as a success any developer who sets out to write great software and then does. I don’t care about the business side any more than I absolutely have to — I care about the craft. If the craft is good, then I call it a success.
Where To Go From Here?
And that concludes our Top App Dev Interview with Brent Simmons. A huge thanks to Brent for sharing his journey with the iOS community :]
We hope you enjoyed this inspiring interview and that you take Brent’s advice to heart when it comes to becoming an indie app developer or working with a company like The Omni Group.
If you are an app developer with a hit app or game in the top 100 in the App store, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line anytime.
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