Shaun Donnelly, developer turned manager turned developer with Indie apps on the side.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeroen Leenarts (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to another special disinfo
Podcast. I'm sitting here withSean Donnelly, originally from
Manchester, but he now lives inLondon. And the interesting bits
about Sean is that he has had aformal education. And then he
ventured out into the jobmarket, but he's also doing some
things on the side. So Shawn,how are you doing today?

Shaun Donnelly (00:21):
I'm really good.
Thanks, Howie.

So how did you end up on my podcast? Actually,

I think I saw a post on record to Sunday on
Mastodon, and you were lookingfor guests, I believe. And I
think I replied, and I was like,Well, I'm, I can't remember
exactly why I started withsomething self deprecating. And
then you said like, no, it'sfine. You can come on. So

it is it is interesting, because I always
get into the situation thatpeople they have an interest in
being on the podcast, but thenit is like, Yeah, but I'm just
like an average person. I justdo my normal thing. And it's not
exciting to anyone. But I thinkit's it's the opposite. Because
people each have their ownstories, their own experience.

(01:04):
And I think whatever you do, youcan always learn from it.
Because yes, we have two bignames. You know that Tim Condon
and today that is from the areathat you grew up in, but that
they started somewhere as well.
Right?

Yeah, absolutely. This is actually the
first time I've ever been on apodcast. So yeah, I'm quite
excited.

Dads. It's easy. It's just you talking to
microphone and don't? Yeah, wecan always add it afterwards.
Right. Yeah. So, Manchester, andwhat education University of
Manchester? You told me

Yeah, so I went to University of Manchester. I
actually started out studyingchemistry. It turned out I was
very, very bad at studyingchemistry, and I failed my first
year. And then I did the resets,in the summer holidays, also
failed those. And then luckily,the School of Computer Science
volunteered to take me

it doesn't sound like you were like, into
computers from a young age then

I kind of was I think the thing was like, when I
was in school, there was no likecomputer science available then.
So we did it. But it was likeExcel and PowerPoint and stuff.
So the main reason I ended updoing chemistry University was
just because I liked it inschool. And then in hindsight,
that was a mistake. And I reallylike I've always liked

(02:24):
computers. I'm very happy that Iended up studying computer
science, but I wish I'd havedone that in the beginning.

Yeah, during my secondary education, I always
liked the chemistry lab andphysics lab. Yeah, because you
could, you know, you could burnstuff and sometimes even blow
stuff up, which was great. Onetime, we actually had a teacher
that destroyed this, thischemistry cabinet that's in the
back of the room, you know, forhazardous experiments. He

(02:52):
basically burned a hole in thebottom of the thing a while, so
I don't know what he did. But itended up with liquid metal at
the bottom. So that wasn't good.
Gosh. So um, but University ofManchester, you enrolled into
computer science. But what wasyour prior exposure to computers
than before that computer gamesor maybe some hobby programming
or what it was?

Like little bits, nothing, nothing major,
really, like I wouldn't sayanything as much as programming.
I think I played around withlike, front page and stuff like
that when I was around like 11.
And I think Visual Basic, andthat kind of thing. But nothing
really. I was always like, intocomputers. And I was making
websites in on like Microsoftpublished in 97. But you know,

(03:34):
it was all just drag and drop.
There was no programminginvolved.

So no, no right clicking on webpages and view
source at that time. No,

I was very curious as a child, to be
honest. I mean, I enjoyedplaying on the PlayStation. But
that was sort of the extent ofit.

Yeah, well, yeah. At some point, you do get
curious how those things arecreated. Yeah. And then you got
into a computer science programand did really like kick off
from the start, like some sortof age that you were feeling
that you were scratching theback then or what was it for
you?

Yeah, I really liked it's kind of like what
you've described, like just kindof seeing the plumbing of how
everything works. The firstlanguage we deal with Java, and
oh, boy. It's a nice starterlanguage, like it's fairly easy
to get going with. And thenyeah, like, you know, the first
few programs you made were verybasic. But then, yeah, I really
enjoyed that. And then I justwent from there, basically,

I can imagine because I always tend to think
that swift as the language isreally making the same motions
in the direction that isdeveloping as, as Java back in
the day, because I'm one ofthose people that I think I got
started with Java, one pointsomething that's still still web
browser. Applets was still athing. Yeah. So that was like,

(04:49):
kind of traumatizing. Butanyway, so you graduated in
2013? If I'm correct, not1102 1011. Yeah, and or got your
start at a at a job right out ofuniversity. So what was the deal
there? Well, what did you Whatdo you what do you start with
your new career?

Yes. So it was a small company. So it's down in
London. So I moved to London forthe job, that they're called IC,
UK. And they, I think at thetime I joined, there were 11 of
us. So it's very small, we werejust all in one room. And they
were an Internet serviceprovider. And they did like web
hosting and domain names andthings like that. And it was

(05:30):
kind of a nice job in the sensethat like, the job itself wasn't
the best. But it was a reallygood way of like finding out
what I liked. Because in such asmall company, you just get to
do a bit of everything. Andthat's where I found that my
favorite bit was like the kindof UI UX front end, all that
sort of stuff. And it was alsothere was no like, well, there

(05:51):
were web frameworks then. Butthey weren't as widely used as
they are today. Like, react wasstill a few years away. Angular
was just about on the horizon.
So everything was just hackedtogether with jQuery and things
like that.

Yeah, too many JavaScript dependencies was
already a thing back then.

I think it was Yeah, but there was no NPM yet.

No, yeah. To download half its internet
manually, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sobut, um, so yeah, I got
interested in front enddevelopment. But that's mostly
web front end development,right,

web front end.
So I did actually make an appfor the iPhone at this time,
which I've never really, likepublicized much, because I've
always been an Apple fanboy. AndI always loved the idea of
having an app. But to be honest,like, I just couldn't wrap my
head around Objective C andUIHC. It. But I did make an app,
it was very, very basic. So itwas, it was called spectral. And
it's no longer available on theApp Store. But all it did, it

(06:43):
was a single text box, and itwould take a hex color, and it
would convert it to an RGB colorcode. And I don't think they
ever released anything otherthan 1.0. And my mom still has
it on her phone. But I thinkit's the only person in
existence, he still has a

dedicated end user. So yeah, I've got this mom
as well. She always likeseverything I've published. So
but um, but at some point, youyou also you like progressing in
your career, you let some frontend development, you did some
more front end development. Butat some point, you also got
interested in doing something onthe side. So but how did that

(07:24):
develop? Because you have yourjob. And at some point, you want
to do something on your own? Howdo you combine the two things?
Because it's a lot of work,actually.

Yeah, not? Well, to be honest. So I mean, in the
case of spectral, it veryquickly became abandoned, where,
and I guess we'll probably talkmore about my other apps a bit
later on. But I constantlystruggle with trying to find
time to balance the two andyeah, like, I think there's a
sort of thing around hustleculture at the moment where
like, it almost feels like everysingle one of your hobbies has

(07:52):
to be monetized. And obviously,that's what I'm doing. But I try
not to be a bit too toxic aboutit. I still want to have fun,
you know,

you immediately touched upon an interesting
thing. That's the monetizationthing. Yeah. But was it
something that you when youstarted with your Indie
products? Was it something thatyou that you aimed for to get
something that was monetizable?
Or was more like, Okay, I've gotsomething I've developed and
progressed to such an extent.
Now, there's something I canmaybe monetize, or what's the

(08:22):
what's the game plan there foryou?

Yeah, it was definitely the latter. So I just
made them for fun, basically.
And then I continued doing them,and then people liked them. And
then it kind of became a thingwhere I was like, maybe there's
a way I can make a bit of moneyfrom this. Yeah. But to be
honest, I didn't even want to inthe beginning, because I I was
quite intimidated by all oflike, the tax forms on the App
Store connect and things likethat. And I just didn't want to

(08:44):
have to get involved with those.

Yeah. Yeah. But is it like, at some point, is it
also a part that you don't wantto monetize on something?
Because then you actually havepaying end users? And they might
have some expectations on whatyou're delivering? Or is that a
factor as well?

Absolutely.
Like, there's a reason why mostof my apps don't really have any
external dependencies, because Idon't want ever get to a point
where like, I can never fullyswitch off or take a holiday.
Because, you know, I'mconstantly worrying about what
if Server X goes down? So yeah,most of my things were on client
side.

So nothing, nothing, cloud hosted nothing
back, and maybe some cloud camein. And not even that.

Not even that the closest thing I have is my
app. Taylor's version has someCloudflare web workers, but
they're, they're very, veryfault tolerant, and they're used
for like a really tiny bit ofthe app. So that's it.

Yeah, you want to be able to sleep at night.
Right. Exactly. So but so yeah,you got started with like, in
the iOS development, it's quiterecently relatively in your
career. Yeah, like 2020. That's,is that like started pandemic
time even.

Yeah, it's not a coincidence. The timing it was
it was April 2020. You know,we're all stuck in sides and I
thought I'll finally learn SwiftUI. And well, Swift UI was quite
new at the time. But yeah, andsome tax forms are right. Yeah.
Eventually the tax forms camealong.

Yeah. So but But where did you pick up iOS
development? And because it'snot something that you just
decided to open up Xcode andthen say, Okay, I'm gonna write
an app. There's a processinvolved to actually get you to
that stage.

Yeah, I'd been doing a little bit at my job
when I was at Skyscanner. But itwasn't real iOS development. It
was React Native, but it was,you know, close enough that I
got to run the simulators inXcode, and things like that. So
it kind of opened that door alittle bit. And then it was
actually do you know, thewebsite, re Wendell ich.com, I
think they've just rebranded togo Deco. That's kind of a name.

(10:44):
That's it. I followed the SwiftUI tutorial on there. And it was
to make a it's a slider. Andthen you have these, it gives
you a number like 34. And youhave to try and drag the slider
to the number 44. And superbasic, but it was a really good
way of kind of learning thefundamentals.

Now, it's interesting because off the
cuff, you just it's a side notethat you actually mentioned
there. Because it's interestingthat to hear that you. You did
web development, probably atsome point, the React became a
thing. And then at Skyscanner,you got to develop with React
Native. So you actually take theweb stack to a mobile device and

(11:23):
actually develop apps with it.
And that was sort of like yourentryway, or at least some
exposure to native mobile appdevelopment. And that allows you
to grow into a position that youwill like, okay, let's let's
look at the native side ofthings and see how that works
for me.

Yeah, absolutely. So the thing I was
working on at the time atSkyscanner was the design
system. I'll give a shout outeven though I don't work there
anymore. It's it's open source.
So it's Skyscanner Dot Design,if anybody wants to check it
out. It's called backpack andthe design system when I joined,
it was just for web browsersReact components. And then over
the course of the next fewyears, we expanded it to React
Native then proper native, likeUI kit, iOS, and Android. And I

(12:02):
didn't ever do the UI Kit stuffmyself, because it was around
the time I was switching frombeing an individual contributor
to a manager. But I was quiteheavily involved in the React
Native side.

Yeah. So manager Ephraim. So yeah. How
did that happen?

Basically, it was very simple. So I, I got
promoted to senior softwareengineer in give us the
beginning of 2019. And thecareer ladder at Skyscanner said
once you get to that level, youcan sort of switch to the
parallel managers track if you'dlike. And I just thought that
sounds fun. I'll give it a go.
And was it fun or not? Well,I've recently switched away back

(12:40):
to being an independent,individual contributors. So
maybe that answered the questionfor you. But I did it for a few
years. So

it's sufficiently different that?
Yeah, it does take you away fromthe real technical work, I guess
you you still have some exposureto technical things. But I can
imagine that if you really enjoythe role of being an icy
individual contributor, that youthen do miss something if you if
you switch to like, managingpeople, and instead of code,

yeah, and there were a lot of really good parts
of management. I did enjoy. Andyou know, I've read them.
Charity majors has got thisthing about the IC manager
pendulum. Maybe the pendulumwill swing back for me Sunday,
but right now, I feel like Iwant to spend more time on
technical problems.

Yeah. So was it a conscious decision to move out
of sky Skyscanner into anothercompany duffel? To actually get
back to the coding again? Or wasit due to external factors as
well?

Yeah, it was external factors. So I actually
only switched back to not beinga manager a couple of months
ago. So I joined duffel as amanager, and I was managing
there until October last year.
And, yeah, I really liked thetravel space. So I was really
happy to join duffel because Idecided to leave Skyscanner, and
it took a long time to findanother role and yet Skyscanner
was was really good. But Iwanted to try somewhere else.

(14:01):
And I was happy to stay intravel.

Yeah, because you stuck around Skyscanner
relatively long in your career,right? So I think it's like four
years or so.

Yeah. Which, you know, in tech terms is a
lifetime. average tenure in techtends to be two years in length.

I worked at my first job for nine years. Wow.
It was consulting, though. So Igot like new projects every six
months, every two years bylogging on the client. But yeah,
that sounds good. I've seen alot of Java code back in the
day. So So you switch back frombeing a manager to being an IC,

(14:39):
within the same company, whichis interesting, because you
didn't use a job change toactually or actually a employer
change to actually switch yourcareer path. So how was the
process because I imagined thatyou were working at duffel doing
your managerial things. And thatat some point, you were like,
Yeah, I just wanted to likewrite code again, please. Is
that possible? Or What do theyhave that in their? In their

(15:04):
policies that you can do that?
Or what's the process?

Yeah, it's pretty much how you described.
So duffles, quite a smallcompany. I think, right now we
have, I want to say about 60people. And, to their credit,
they were incrediblyaccommodating. So I'm I went and
spoke to my manager, who's he'sthe CEO of the company, his
name's Norberto, and I basicallysaid to what you just said,
like, um, I think I'd like toswitch back and do some more

(15:27):
technical things. And, you know,gave a few other reasons. And
then it took a few months for itto happen, because it's not the
sort of thing where you can justflick a switch and have that
happen. And yeah, you know, Iwas happy to wait. And
eventually, there was a companyreorg in October last year, so
they coincided it with that.

And was it like, difficult getting back in
to the technology again? Sogetting up to speed with coding
again, what what's it like,because you have not been coding
like, day in day out for for acouple years. By that time, you
may be in the evenings on theside, you know, you're in the
apps, but there's something thatmust have been like a bit of a

(16:07):
challenge there.

Yeah, a little bit. It wasn't too bad, though.
I always kind of had, I kept, Ikept coding a little bit at
duffel. So even when I wasn'tcoding directly, I was always
reviewing like a lot of pullrequests and things like that.
So I had an idea of like, thearchitecture of our products.
But then the best thing is, soI'm not allowed to say what it
is. But I started working on newproducts. So brand new code

(16:31):
base, didn't need to worry aboutany technical debt. And that
product is launching onWednesday. So by the time this
goes out, I probably can't talkabout it. But that's not ready
yet.

Well, I will make sure to update the link to
that product in the show notesonce you give me the go ahead to
actually put it in the shownotes. So just like add to the
drama and the intrigue of thispodcast episode a little bit. So
but then you switch back tosoftware development within
duffel again, and but just toexplain a bit duffel isn't a

(17:03):
travel space, but what did theydo as a company? General? Yeah,

so I'm supposed to have like a one sentence
description for this, but Idon't. I guess the quickest way
is like, it's like Stripe. It'slike Stripe, but for travel. So
we are the kind of middlemanthat powers a lot of travel
infrastructure. Right now. Wejust do flights. So. So my old
company was Skyscanner. Andimagine if you wanted to start

(17:29):
your own, like a competitor toSkyscanner. Or maybe if you just
wanted to have flights as like asideline to the podcast, you
could use duffel to likeabstract away all the difficult
parts of selling flights, likeit's a, it's very surprising.
Like, what I've learned is theairline industry is just an
industry made up of edge cases.
Every airline does everythingdifferently. So we account for

(17:50):
all of those things for you.

So it's sort of like a Data Broker partner for
travel itineraries like flights.
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Andthen of course, we need API and
reporting, and you pay a monthlysubscription. And then you have
like, great data to work with.

Yeah, that's right. So you get access to
like, all sorts of stuff for us.
And cool. We also offer like UIcomponents as well, which is
something that my team works on.
So if you wanted to do likethings like seat selection, or
quite complicated UX patterns,you can use ours and then you
don't have to build thatyourself.

Yeah. Because how many I don't know how many
seat layouts there are inairplanes. I think just about as
many airplanes there are in theworld for passengers. But it's a
lot. And and then there's alsoall kinds of pricing tiers going
on. And yeah, so if like, youhave to like not incapacitated
to be even allowed in certainseats. I think it's an exit

row. Yeah. And I think it's Etihad. Or it might
be Qatar but there's oneairline, they have a type of
seat that's just for Falcons.
And for people who aretransporting birds, and there's
all sorts of things. Yeah,that's

cool. So but so that's, that's like a little bit
of an overview of you, from yourstudies to your job right now.
And that you actually made twobig switches in your career not
only employees but also from ICto management and then from
management back to IC themanagement still engineering
management's have still verytechnically focused. Yeah. Any

(19:24):
words of wisdom that you havefor people that are like in a
similar position that they'relike, yeah, how do I go left to
go right? So what what what someconsiderations they should think
about according to yourexperience,

um, I think I would say when you become a
manager, you should be awarethat your time isn't necessarily
your own. So like, sometimespeople will need you short
notice and, you know, you needto drop everything and help them
and that's okay, though. Like,I'm not I don't mean it as a
negative. It's just something tobe aware of. Like if you're
hoping to have a quiet day orgetting your head down. That can

(19:55):
happen but also, free thingswill just drop in your lap at
once. I'm, I find it's alsoreally rewarding in a way that
coding isn't necessarily likethere was somebody I managed at
Skyscanner who joined us as anintern. And then he ended up. He
was a senior software engineerby the time I left, and it was
so great to see him grow and youknow, be able to help him do

(20:16):
that.

Yeah, it's about like, about people that
you get to work with. Right?

Yeah, definitely.

Cool. At some point, you also got into in the
app development, that'ssomething we casually mentioned
already, like, startup grown up.
Probably had some extra time onyour hand back then. Yeah,
exactly. But you were probablyalready doing some coding with
iOS by that time, because that'sin the middle of your stint at
at Skyscanner, where you gotyour exposure to app development

(20:46):
through React Native. And thenyou started dabbling with, with
native iOS development, thanksto the material by Ray
Wonderlic, now called CodeTwo.
But But how did you get like anidea for for a product or was
more like something that youneeded for yourself? And then at
some point, you came to theconclusion, hey, this is

(21:08):
actually something other peoplemight like as well.

Yeah, it was kind of like that. So there was
two reasons that I went withsome, my personal best is a
workout tracking app. And thereason I did that is two
reasons. One was the only reasonwe were allowed to leave the
house, except for like, going tothe supermarket was exercise. So
I was had quite a good exerciseroutine in spring 2020. And so

(21:32):
it was natural that, you know, Iwanted a way to track those. The
second part was that I reallydidn't want to have to have a
back end to deal with. And Ithought, well, HealthKit is
already on iOS. And it'sbasically like a back end that's
made for you, you know, there'sAPI calls into it, you can read
and write from it. So it wasjust kind of a perfect
combination of those two things.

So what does personal best do as an app and
it tracks your workouts? Butpersonal best? That seems to?
Like it does indicate somethingin the sense of? Well, yeah,
personal best, right is likeabout self improving your
workout results or your timing,or what is it about?

Yeah, kind of, I think a little bit, it's been a
bit unfocused, up until now. AndI do intend to address that. But
it started out as showing youyour top three workouts. So it
would say these are your topthree distances. So that's where
the name came from. Since I'veevolved it, it still does have
that functionality. But it'skind of evolved into more of a
general purpose Workout Trackingnow. So it can do things like

(22:34):
interesting stuff, like youknow, show you a map of where
you went or show you like chartsof your heart rate zones. But it
can also do sort of silicathings like, it can tell you how
far you've run in terms of like,distance to the moon and things
like that.

But it is something that it has a lot of
similarities with what whathealth kits or the health app
itself can provide. So what doesit add on top of that, because
that's probably the uniqueselling point of the product
that actually allows you to havean interest of people in the
app, right?

Yeah, that's it, like the health app is really
good for what it does. But it'sinherently limited. And I think
Apple's thing is, they tend tofavor the 8020 thing quite
heavily. So there's certainadvanced functionality that they
probably won't touch, theyreally just want to do the stuff
that's good enough 80% ofpeople. And that's where
personal best comes in. So I tryand take that data and turn it

(23:31):
into like useful information.
And there is some overlap withthe health app there. But I want
to go a little bit deeper, andadjust things like that. And
then there's things like widgetsas well that the health app
doesn't have.

Yeah, just making the because that's what I
noticed with the health app.
There's like, a ton ofinformation in there. But just
getting to it and actuallydiscovering what's even
available in there. It's likesuch a hassle. Yeah, so but and
also you add a lot ofachievements, I think with
personal bests, right.

Yeah, I had an achievements feature. So I had a
really good time coming up withlike puns for all the names of
the achievements. That wasaround a year ago that I
released that feature.

And it is personal bests, just a side
project for the fun of it, or isit also something that that?
Well, it, it doesn't pay yourincome, but it's a nice side
income, or is it not monetized?

It is monetized.
So currently, it has a an in apppurchase for a recurring
subscription that I callpersonal best Pro. So there's a
monthly and annual or lifetimepurchase option. And there's
also the requisite tip jar thatevery indie indie developer has,

but is it like a baseline version and then a
premium feature set or is it?

Yeah, that's right. So I don't want it to be
too limiting for anybody thatdoesn't pay for personal best
pro because I don't want to putpeople off. So the data you get
is limited without the proversion, but it's still enough
to be useful.

Now. That's probably Like, you can look
further back with the premiumversion and you can get some
more visualizations, right?

Yeah, so the basic version has like the last
seven days, the last 30 days,and then pro you get like 90 365
this month this year in alltime. And then there's also
extra data as well.

Cool. So but so that was something that was
developed because of a personal,personal, it's really because
she wants to track your ownworkouts. And is that the case
for all your other apps that youcreated as well? Because you
have three apps on your websiteright now. And the other ones
are called Taylor's version andhealth drop.

Yeah, so health drop isn't really one that I do
much marketing with. It's, it'sbasically a utility app that I
use for personal bests. So allit does is it allows you to
create workoutsprogrammatically. So if you need
some, some like test data, youcan just do that rather than
going and getting them. I'veactually since built some

(25:59):
functionality into personalbests that way, you can export
one of your workouts as JSON andthen re import it. So I don't
really use health drop anymore,but I may do something more if
it's Sunday. Taylor's versionwas definitely about scratching
an itch, though. So yeah, I'm,I'm a very big Taylor Swift Fan,
or Swifty, as we call it. And soin, I think, 2021, she started

(26:24):
releasing them, she recorded herfirst six albums, it's a whole
thing, you can look it up onlinebase, essentially, because she
wants to own her masters. And asa good fan, I wanted to switch
all my playlists on Spotify overto only use the new recorded
versions.

Because then she gets, then she gets just
this tiny fraction of a centmore, you have to listen to her
songs. Right, exactly.

And she clearly needs more money. So. So I
decided to, it would have takenme 10 minutes to do that across
my playlists. But I decided tospend six weeks making an app to
do it instead.

Yeah, and it does have like, a lot of
appreciation within theSwifties. Community.

And it's added a little bit yeah, like, to be
honest, not as much as, as I'dhave liked to. I was really
hoping I would have got some ofthese articles about, you know,
look at this silly thing thatsomebody built that I didn't
really get anything like that.
But I kind of made it as apassion project. So it's okay.
Yeah,

just to upgrade your own albums, and you felt
like, yeah, I can do this with awhole bunch of code, and spend
even more time on it while doingit, but then be able to redo it
over and over again, which Iwould never do, of course, but
do you ever did you everconsider like not listening to
Taylor Swift through Spotify? orother means or not?

No, not really.
Like I've been using Spotifysince it first came out. So I
don't think I can ever move

now. Yeah, once once you're like entranced. You
can't go anymore. Yeah.

So I tried Apple Music When it very first
launched in 2015. And Idownloaded a lot of music onto
my iPads. I went on holiday toThailand, and then a week into
the holiday without anyinternet. It deleted all the
music. So it was like,

a good experience. Yeah,

I've never gone back since then. Yeah.

Yeah. So um, so you have like, three apps that
you have publicly available? Oneis doing quite nicely, I guess
the personal bests? Yeah, thehealth drop is more of a
utility. That's, well, it'suseful, but that's about it.
Yeah. And the Taylor's versionis that also has an in app
subscription, or like, a tipjar, or what is it?

Yeah, it has a one time in app purchase. So the
idea is, it will scan all theplaylists for you, and it will
show you like, what songs needreplacing, but to actually do
the replacement, then you needto pay. I think it's 299. For
the pro version. To be honest,it hasn't had a huge amount of
sales, but I also haven'tmarketed it.

Yeah. Yeah. But what's interesting there is that
you are integrating with theSpotify API, right? Yeah. Is the
good APR. No.

It's pretty good. I found it a little bit
difficult to use until I found areally good swift library that
somebody had already puttogether for it. But yeah, it's
decent. The thing I found a bittroubling, not traveling a bit
challenging was they need toapprove you to use your use
their API. And they have quite alot of rules around it. So not

(29:20):
only do you have to go throughappstore approval, you have to
go through Spotify as approval.
And the rules are things likeyou can't use a corner radius.
And anytime you show album artfrom Spotify, you have to just
have square corners, whichdidn't really fit in with my UI,
but had to do it. Okay, andanywhere that you show content
from Spotify, you also have tohave a button that will open the
content in the Spotify app.

(29:42):
Okay, which to be fair that'squite nice. So um, you know, I
had to integrate all of this butyeah, it took a while to get
approved.

So but they do give good feedback on on what
you need to change.

They give diplomatic way of putting it is
it's slightly better thanappstore connects feedback.

Yeah. That's it's not sure if that's a
politically correct response.
But yeah, I can imagine that itis sometimes quite terse, what
you get back as a response on,on a review that you've
requested? Yeah, it can be. Sobut, again, this is an app that
has sort of a back end, but notsomething that you control or
something that you have to getup for in the middle of the

(30:21):
night. Probably on purpose aswell. Yeah. So is that something
instead of is that pattern thatyou consider that you will keep
on doing for the foreseeablefuture? Or what's your what's
your, what are your are thesethere?

Yeah, as much as possible, I want to do that. So
like, I have some ideas forpersonal best, that would
involve server side stuff. ButI'll always make sure to build
things in a very fault tolerantway. So for example, I've had an
idea for a feature where youcould see your workout stats
compared to everybody who usesthe app. So rather than just
saying that was your thirdfastest run of all time, it

(30:57):
could say that was the thirdfastest out of you know, these
1000s of people. But I would doit in a very sort of progressive
enhancement way. So that if itdidn't work, if the server went
down for some reason, then, youknow, nothing's gonna break, you
just won't see that bit of data.

And what are some mechanisms that you could
use to do this progressiveenhancement of your
visualization?

I mean, I think I would just hide that bit of UI
selectively. I have an exampleof where I've put it into
practices. So in Taylor'sversion, there's that there
needs to be a database of whatthese pre recorded songs are. So
it knows like when to recommendthem for you. And because Taylor
Swift likes to surprise releasealbums, I didn't want to be
reliant on an app update.
Because then by the time it goesthroughout review, you know,

(31:44):
people might have, I might havemissed the boat. So I have an
online database that I canupdate, it's just a JSON file.
And when the app launches, itattempts to contact this
Cloudflare URL and pull it down.
But if it's not there, then ithas a locally stored one that's
baked into the app. So it'sokay, if it's not there.

And this is the mechanism that if it's if it's
able to download the JSON filesuccessfully, it caches that
copy locally, and shadows thebaked information. That's right.
Yeah, yeah. So even if you thenat a later stage have a half
updated list, you still havelike, relatively recent data in
your app bundle available. Yeah.
Can you show? Yeah, because Iimagined that that's just a

(32:26):
mapping between what her oldrecording is and what her new
remastered version is that sheowns. Right? Yeah,

that's literally it. So yeah, it's just anytime
it sees this Spotify URI, itreplaces it with this other
Spotify URI?

And is this data that's like shared online?
Or is it something you have tolike, dig for yourself in the
Spotify app?

Yeah. So I have to go into Spotify, get every
new track, right click get thelink and then pull out the
Spotify have these like customURLs? I have to call that

out? How many tracks this you remastered by
now?

So she's released two albums, plus a few
singles? So probably around 35tracks? That's not not too

bad. Yeah. So but but do you have any stats on
how many users actually do theseconversions on the Spotify
library? And also how much oftheir library you're updating
with, with this process?

I don't actually like, um, I mean, I could find
that data by looking at my APIusage. But I'm quite averse to
collecting data that I don'tneed. And I've never decided to
look at that. So I've just neverdone it.

Yeah, it's the it's the model of like, huge
data should be treated liketoxic waste, you you'd rather
not have it right.

Exactly. Yeah.
Cool.

So what are your plans for your next
project? Or are you still likeworking on improving these three
apps? Or what? What are yourWhat are your thoughts there?
Yeah, so

Taylor's version is effectively finished. So I
will update it every time themusic comes out. And you know,
if like things change in iOS,but for all intents and
purposes, it's done. I did lookat adding support for Apple
Music. And that's my number onerequest. But it's quite
technically difficult becauseApple music doesn't allow you to
delete songs from playlists viatheir API, which is kind of a

(34:16):
functionality that I need. So Idecided to shelve that. On
personal best, I think, to behonest, that will never be
finished. Because its health isjust such a big area, there's so
many things I could do. My dreamis for it to become like, almost
like a virtual personal trainer,where, right now it presents all

(34:37):
this data to you, but it doesn'treally tell you what to do next.
And I'd love for it to be ableto like push you a little bit
more and things like that.

But that sounds like you have some big plans
there for your Indie products,but you also have a day job. So
how do you balance your timebetween the two?

quite poorly. So yeah, it's something I've always
struggled with. So like Imentioned before with like
hustle culture and things likethat, I think I very quickly got
into a point in 2020, whereanytime I wasn't working on my
apps, I had this like guilt atthe back of my mind. I mean, I
was also raised Catholic, so Ialways feel guilty about

(35:14):
something. But

I, that's a bit of an in joke there, I think.
But yeah, I understand.

And then yeah, so I'm trying to be a bit more
balanced with it. One thing thathas really helped is I've
recently stopped workingMondays. So I now have an extra
day a week to spend on thisstuff. So like, I have an Xcode
window just off to the side ofthe screen here. And that's what
I've been doing today. But yeah,I also just try not to feel bad
if I if I want to take a breakif I want to watch a film or
something. And I'll just do thatinstead.

So where you're able to, like, take today less
of your day job, because of theincome that you were already
getting from your products orwhat what was the thought
process there because to a lotof people working a day less has
some significant financialimplications as well. So there

(36:06):
must be a plan in place.
Otherwise, it's like Wild Westcowboy behavior that will only
hurt you in the end, right?

Yeah. So my goal is for me to be able to do what
you've described, and like, makeup the last income from my apps.
But I'm nowhere near that yet.
Like I wrote something on myblog at the end of 2022, which
had like how much I made lastyear. And you can see, it's,
it's like it didn't even pay formy new laptop that I bought last
year. So it's nice to have inlike there. Yeah. So the reason,

(36:34):
the way I've been able to do itis my work have been really
accommodating. And they'reallowing me to do a six month
trial of working what we callcompressed hours. So I still
work the same number of hours,but I do it in four days now
instead of five, which I'm onlyabout a month and a half into
the trial. So, you know, it maynot continue once the trial ends
have to see how they think it'sgone. But that's what I'm doing

(36:56):
at the moment.

So that's like, what what is it nine hour days
or 10 hour days that you'remaking nowadays? And also,
you're still working 40 hours?

Yeah, I am quite tired. And you know, I'm
figuring out how it's all good.

Yeah, yeah. But about this hustle culture. You
mentioned that a couple times.
Yeah. Let's just define it alittle bit. So So what is hustle
culture, according to yourdefinition?

Well, I think you see things like, it's a bit
difficult to just have a hobby.
And I think there's a sort of asocietal pressure almost to turn
it into something. So it's like,oh, okay, you enjoy going
bouldering on the weekend, haveyou thought about making an
Instagram about or yourbouldering exploits? And then
maybe you can get sponsored. Andobviously, I'm exaggerating a
little bit, but I think there isan element of that that can

(37:43):
creep in. So I'm trying not tosuccumb to that too much.

But it's it's something that is more prevalent
in software development circlesyou think?

Possibly. I mean, that's the circle that I'm
in. I don't know about othercircles.

It's an interesting topic, because I've
been doing this podcast, alsosince 2028. Yeah, go figure. And
I have a sponsor runway dot teamat the moment. Yeah. And it's
not a big sponsorship, but itdoes allow me to, you know,
cover the expenses of runningthe podcast. And occasionally,

(38:24):
you know, buy some new gear orreplace something that is like,
a worn out. But, yeah, it's tome, that's like, fine. It's
like, it helps with keepinggoing so to speak. So that not
to know that you're okay, yourdirect expenses are covered. But
it's not, it's not a replacementof income. For me, it's just

(38:47):
that sometimes you have a bit ofluck, you have like a big
sponsorship, and you dosomething specific to a specific
brand. And then it's like a onetime nice windfall that you get
but but nothing, nothing lifechanging. Really. Yeah,
absolutely. And but sometimesyou hear these people that they
they create an app, and they'rewildly successful. But I do

(39:10):
think that's that that's thetypical outlier bias that that
you're facing there as well.
It's like you hear the bigsuccess stories. And of course,
it's great to dream about thosethings. But how likely is it
that that somebody is able tojust come up with an app or the
code, it's in its evening hoursand then have like, Well, life
changing amounts of income allof a sudden for a year long and

(39:33):
then be able to, like buy ahouse and not be in debt with a
mortgage anymore for the rest ofyour life? Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think you've
really touched on somethingthere. Like when you see things
from the outside, it's so easyto assume that these things have
come easily to people. But youknow, sometimes it happens like
look at Flappy Bird. But mostlymost of the time that's not the
case. Like if you look at DavidSmith, who he makes widgets and
if I Quite a lot of other apps,widget Smith was like wildly

(40:03):
successful. You know, it wasnumber one on the app store for
a while. And it's done reallywell. But like, I also know that
I don't know him personally. ButI've seen his work. And like, I
know that there's a very, verylong road that got him there.
And it wasn't just an overnightsuccess. It was years in the
making together.

Yeah. Because he's, he's, he's like one of
these people that has like, aninsane amount of app products
available in the store even andyeah, like, sleep tracking apps
and step counting apps and allkinds of other things. And some
of them they're successful,some. And he's also very adamant
about like, Okay, if somethingis not working, if there's no

(40:40):
financial gain, to be had thereanymore, he'll just end the
product. And that's fine.
Because, yeah, he his, his, hisway of working is really to to
have a livelihood through hisapp business. And for some
reason he was able to, toachieve that. But he took some
time getting there, I think. ButI do think he also makes a nice

(41:00):
side income with podcastingnowadays as well.

Yeah. Like, I've mostly heard about this stuff,
because I listened to under theradar. Get all of their stories
directly.

I watched it again, like in like under 30
minutes, or was it 20 minutes?
Well, how long is the are thoseepisodes?

Every episode was not longer than 30 minutes
until they did the live one forWWDC, which was like 44 minutes.

Yeah. And then since then, it's like most of
the time, the 30 minutes. Butit's a podcast that is very
interesting to to listen to, ifyou're in to iOS development,
especially if you're into iOS inthe app development. Yeah.
Because you get to hear someinsights about the about app
development from David Smith.
And Marco Arment, who createsthe overcast podcast player, he

(41:44):
does have some infrastructurethat he needs to maintain.

Yeah, because he's, I listened to ATP as well,
his other podcast. And I knowthat Linode is quite a frequent
sponsor on there. And he usuallymentions that he uses them. I
imagine his infrastructure costsare quite high.

Yeah, I think he mentioned it somewhere. It's
like a couple of grants. Eacheach month, really, I think,
yeah. Oh, well. But yeah, that'salso one of these apps that's
like wildly successful, justwith like, large subscriber
bases, which is great. I'm gonnagrab it to his podcast player as
well. Yeah, I

use it every day. It's great. Yeah, I don't
want to

look at the stats of how many hours is saved
with the speed improvementsfeatures in the app.

So I actually looked at mine yesterday is 106
hours for me.

Oh, that's not too bad. I should, I should look
up what I got, actually. Okay, Ifound the the overcast,
SmartSpeed statistic in myovercast app as well. SmartSpeed
has saved you an extra 496 hoursbeyond speed adjustments alone.

Wow, that's like three weeks.

I listened to too many podcasts. So, but
talking about podcasts. What aresome podcasts that you like
listening to? Because wementioned under the radar? You
mentioned ATP? Or is thereanother specific podcast that
you really like? And pleasedon't mention my podcast?

Yeah, I won't mention yours. And oh, I've got
overcast over my ear. So yeah, Ilistened to ATP every week. I've
been listening to that since thebeginning. I've got I'm
currently adding to the Last ofUs podcasts. They've done a
companion. I don't know ifyou've come across off menu
before. This is not an appdevelopment podcast. It's just a
very funny podcast with twoBritish comedians. The talk show

(43:32):
with John Gruber. I don't listento every episode. Swift bison
dials a big one. under theradar. There's It's Always Sunny
in Philadelphia podcast as well.
But I don't have that manybecause I just find I don't. I
tend to listen to music a lot.
Like, obviously a lot of TaylorSwift. So I don't have that much

(43:52):
time for listening to podcastsoutside of that. So I only have
about what was that about six orseven?

Yeah. Yeah, I really like 99%, invisible ATP,
of course, jackpot by Brettanwil. And then I have a lot of
security related podcasts forsome reason. Okay. But what I
really like is everythingeverywhere daily. And that's
like, a daily Apple Dailyepisode is like 1011 minutes

(44:18):
long. And it's about some randomfacts in the world. And like,
for instance, recently, he hadlike a podcast about the cult of
reason. Okay, the Super Bowl,vitamin D, the Spruce Goose. And
what else? The worst year inhistory, the Teapot Dome

(44:40):
scandal. So it's all aboutvolcanoes. It's like totally
random things. And it's like ifyou look at the title, so like,
why would I be interested ininterested in this? But every
single time no know how sillythe topic. It's always fun and
it's like a 10 minute lesson andthat's what I really like. It's
like you just learned somethingthat you wouldn't have come
across otherwise.

Yeah. That sounds good in 10 minutes is
great, like when you're just onthe bus or something.

Exactly. And especially with SmartSpeed, and
some speed boosts, it's likeeven shorter. Okay, Shawn, I
noticed that we're alreadycoming up to 45 minutes. Is
there anything anything specificwe still need to cover? Before
we start wrapping up ourconversation,

I think we've covered most things. I did
release a newsletter as well,which I only did the first issue
about four days ago. So not manypeople have seen it yet. But so
it's called nice UX design. Andthe URL is nice UX Dot Design.
And the reason I started it was,so there was a Tumblr blog that
I used to really like calledLittle Big details. And they

(45:42):
would post like these nicelittle details that you would
see in people's UX and thingslike that. And unfortunately, it
sort of disappeared. It's stillonline, but it's not been
updated in years. And I wasthinking to myself a few months
ago that I really missed it. Andthen I thought, Well, why don't
I just sort of bring it backmyself. And I thought I would do
it as a newsletter. I registeredthe domain name back in August,

(46:05):
I think last year, never didanything with it. And then the
other day, I was just thinkingto myself, if I don't like
announce this thing, then I'llnever feel the pressure to
actually do anything with it. SoI, I went on Twitter, and I
said, I'm making this and thenhere's the signup form. And then
I sort of felt like, Okay, well,now I need to follow through. So

(46:25):
it goes out every other Friday,as of Friday, just gone.

So how many subscribers by now?

Currently, I have 50. So that's, that's
pretty good. Actually. Is thatgood? I've never done a
newsletter before. Yeah, but

just in like a week's time. Just have 50
people. That's, that'sdefinitely more than your close
family at least.

Yeah, I mean, because I can see all of the
email addresses as well thatpeople sign up with and like,
there's some interesting domainnames there as well, like, you
know, from companies and things,which is quite good.

Yeah. And it shows what, like, just sharing
some things on social media cando. Yeah, cuz, yeah. And you're
using a nice platform as well. Iknow this curated. That's,
that's what they for were fromthe iOS dev weekly, at some
point created. I think he'sstill using that. But he has
some sort of super customizedversion of curated that he's

(47:15):
using, I think, yeah. So

what actually happened was, I thought, I
really like iOS dev weekly, I'llsee what's powering that. And I
found this platform curated as aresult of that. And I signed up
for it. And then I had aquestion about it. And I
messaged Dave, and I don'treally know, Dave, I've emailed
a couple of times, I messagedhim, like Wednesday, last week,
and said, Hey, I've noticedusing curated, could you tell me
about this thing? Maybe? And hesaid, Yeah, I made curate it.

(47:38):
And I was like, oh,

yeah, but it's with Dave. He's like, super nice
if you ever get to speak withhim in person, or even just
through one of his onlineplatforms, because he's also
worked on the, on the Swiftpackage index. And yeah, he's
just super nice. And it's justAnytime he's he's really busy.
But if he comes across yourmessage, and he has some time,

(48:02):
you get like a decent answerthat is, like, much more
elaborate than you wouldactually even expect. And
considering the time constraintshe has to work with. Yeah, so
shout out to Dave because I lovehis newsletter, by the way.
Yeah, I've

been a subscriber for much longer than
I've been an iOS developer.
Yeah, he sent me a really niceemail on Friday as well to say
that he liked the newsletter. Sothat was really nice to hear.

Okay, so definitely going to link that
one from the shownotes, nice UXDot Design. And how do you get
the links that you put in yournewsletter? Do you have some
sort of RSS process going on? Or

I just have a huge Trello board? Yeah, and I
just if I notice something thatI like, or I occasionally
include details that are not sonice as well. So I just I have a
list of a nice thing in the listfor not nice things.

Yeah, those are those are those like, fun for
like the final thing on yournewsletter sock. Okay, this is
something not so nice. Maybe?
Yeah. All right. Well, whatwe'll do is we'll make sure that
everything is linked from theshow notes. So that's nice UX
Dot Design. Also your, yourwebsites, go to kuma.com.com.
And everything that we talkedabout, you can find on on Sean's

(49:12):
website. And once this new thinghas been launched, make sure to
also give me a ping about that.
Because then I can include thatas well as a link in the show
notes. And, yeah, where canpeople find you online?

And, of course, yeah, so I am on Twitter, but I
think like a lot of people I'mnot really using it anymore for
reasons that I won't go into,but I think everybody knows. So
I'm primarily on Mastodon now.
So I'm, I'm at Shawn Don. Sothat's SHA u n d o n at MSC d n
dot social. Yeah.

Let's link that one as well from the show notes.
Right.

Yeah. You can also email me as well, like, you
know, I love hearing from otherdevelopers and people who use my
app. as well,

yeah. And especially if they have some
questions about how in the appdevelopment is working for you.
I think you're just what is itcalled nowadays? I think they
call it posts nowadays onMastodon as well. But you're
just one message away on thosesocial platforms as

well. Yeah, definitely. Cool.

Well, Shawn, thanks for your time. And maybe
we ran into each other on aconference or something, and was
definitely nice talking to you.
And learning a little bit aboutyour backgrounds and the things
that you did as a softwaredeveloper.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I've
never actually been to an iOSconference. I would love to
attend on some time.

I know there's a nice one in Leeds this year.
But by Adam, I was

gonna go last year, but I didn't have enough
time off to use for work. So

I was there last year. I'll have to go this
year. Yeah. I'm not sure yet. IfI can go there this year, but
we'll see. Yeah,

I mean, my parents live 30 miles away from
Leeds, so I have no reason notto go.

And no excuses anymore. Yeah. All right. Talk
to you later.

Cool. Thank you.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Shaun Donnelly, developer turned manager turned developer with Indie apps on the side.

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Shaun Donnelly, developer turned manager turned developer with Indie apps on the side.

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