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20 May 2010

Looking for possibilities to think about

Well, basically I have a lot of spare time at the moment because I am in-between jobs. Jobs to fit my capabilities are a bit rare out here in the West (of Australia). Especially since I have never done any SQL type database work nor web/internet programming. Being a programmer, of course I have to program. So that is what I do, sitting in my garage office at home, almost every day of the week. What to program? It has to be something of interest to me (since I am doing it in my own time without pay). It might as well be something that will increase my future employment prospects. So the first thing I did was to produce the CSharpEval program. C# is my language of preference and this language is also widely used, so continuing practice in it is all to the good. What next? Looking at CSharpEval I decided trying to monetise it is probably a hopeless task. The obvious alternative was to make it open source. I thought about just publishing it on GoogleCode and moving on to something else. However I decided a better idea was to make my next project the creation of a website. Having never done anything involving the internet, to me this looked like a good learning experience. A website needs to be about something, so my practice website can be about my CSharpEval program. This also provides practice in documenting my code, plus 'selling' the project. It also makes a good addition to my resume. Win-win all the way round.

It is possible that you may guess from my website that I have no previous expertise in design. I am sure that much can be improved, both the website itself, and the documentation and the CsharpEval code. So I invite you to turn this into a teaching moment, and send in any constructive criticisims you may have. Within my abilities I shall do my best to improve this website and its code. If you see any improvements it will be because of all your good feedback I will have been receiving. If I fall short in this endeavour, however, it will only be my fault. Note that, while I am eager to receive as many bug reports as possible, at this point in time I have no plans to substantially improve the CSharpEval program itself. But that's all right, if you have ideas on how to extend the code, just fork it, work on it and then publish (if you wish). Please send me a message to keep me and others informed.

Naturally it had occurred to me that an obvious course of activity was to start up my own micro ISV (independent software vendor) company. However a realistic appraisal of my capabilities and situation suggests that I am not really suitable for such a role. I would rather work for a decent wage, if I can find a suitable job. So I keep on searching for jobs, but in the meanwhile there is still the question of what my next project is to be. If I am to be coding while I wait for a job, there is certainly no harm in my acting as though I were producing a saleable product. Given my situation this is a zero-risk option.

Accordingly, for my next project, I have tentatively decided to produce an easy-to-use report generator for Access databases, perhaps with the ability to serve reports to the web. The elevator pitch would be something along the lines of "Non-programmers can easily specify most reports and publish them to the web". I am choosing this area because I have written report generators before and know something about them, and because it appears that there are many Access databases out there.

This is a worthwhile project in itself; however since I am trying to act as if this is a commercial endeavour, there is the problem that it is too general a goal for a micro-ISV to attempt. There are many report generators out there, including the built-in one in Microsoft Access itself. What I am thinking is there must be some small vertical-niche area that uses Access reports and which is currently not particularly well served by commercial products.

So I am asking for comments about my choice of projects, and any possibilities for vertical-niche areas to explore. Feel free to suggest any ideas you may have. Naturally any choice I make will be all of my responsibility and I will use your writings simply as a starting point.

Article text is under the Creative Commons Zero license. Source codes are under the MIT license.

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