Any nerd can build an app.
The DIY approach for mobile development.
Your ‘very technical’ niece, some overseas coder or your IT guy could probably ‘figure it out.’
I say ‘figure it out’ because its similar to asking your neighbor to build a deck. Sure he’s handy, changes his own oil, installed new cabinets last summer plus, you can pay him with micobrews. Its a win win!
It might workout. Maybe your niece is a hidden savant and your neighbor a budding master carpenter.
It also might be disastrous. Getting approved by the App Store is tricky, especially if you’ve never done it before. Staying on budget, on time and getting to version 1.0 is enormously difficult for the inexperienced. We know, we remember.
More than likely it’ll just turn out fine.
Maybe it was completed a little late, does most of what you asked for and seems to function…well enough. If you only want a passable product by all means go the ‘DIY’ route. If you want an app just to have an app, that’s a great route to take.
If you want something more, you need to invent an app not just build one.
An inventor creates something out of nothing, creates a new category and carves out a new path. A builder can only make what’s already been constructed. Nothing inherently wrong with this skill but in a marketplace loaded with bigger, more experienced and established competition, you need an inventor. You need to be faster, smarter and more efficient and that’s exactly what inventions do.
[Author]
Chris Prestemon is writer and strategist for happyMedium.
