I've been programming since I was 11, and over the years I've started way more projects than I've actually finished. Most of them either got abandoned halfway through or reached a point where they worked well enough for me, so I just moved on to something else.
Recently, I started working on an FramePDF, Android PDF app. I mainly wanted something simple that could handle all the usual PDF stuff without having to jump between different apps or upload files to some website.
I kept adding things I thought would be useful. PDF editing, annotations, image extraction, conversions, and a bunch of smaller tools. At some point I realized I was doing the same thing I always do, just endlessly adding features instead of actually releasing anything.
So I stopped adding stuff, fixed what I could, and submitted it to Google Play.
It's live now. There are still things I want to improve, but at least it's out there instead of sitting in another GitHub repo collecting dust. One thing I'm realizing is that building an app and getting people to use it are two completely different problems.
For people who've shipped Android apps independently, how did you approach your first release? Did you spend much time marketing, or just keep shipping updates?
submitted by /u/JakeOJeff[link] [comments]