Sugar Maple Software

Joel Spolsky recently linked to an incredible long rant by Steve Yegge, “Good Agile, Bad Agile.” I admit that, after reading for a while, I just skimmed it. I’m very interested in agile software development and could write all day about it. Instead, I’m just going to talk about Pair Programming.

The Mac community is an amazing beast. More generally, the Apple community is an amazing beast. In the days before the advent of the Internet, when I first starting programming on Apple computers, the community was local and gathered at computer fairs held at area malls. Later, when I began developing for the Mac, the community had a fledging on-line presence (e.g., Guy Kawasaki’s Evanglist and various web sites), but I still eagerly awaited my Apple developer mailings and develop magazine. Today, the community is global and gathers on a variety of mailing lists and web sites. The general Apple community seems stronger today than ever before; this is especially the case of the Mac developer community. For someone starting down the independent software developer path, this is quite fortuitous since this community is an incredible resource.

Once I decided to become an independent software developer, I began to investigate how to form a company. My primary motivation for was to reduce personal liability and, therefore, protect my family. Hopefully, there will also be some tax advantages. There were a number of questions to answer.

Recently, a couple independent software developers have shared their stories. Paul Kafasis presented the Rogue Amoeba story, “The Full-Time Gap.” Encouraged by this, Daniel Jalkut recently commented on his path to become an independent software developer in his post “The Road Less Traveled” and invited others to shared their experiences. These are both in the same vein as Gus Mueller’s story from last year, “How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days.” Encouraged by Daniel’s post, I’ll share my story.