How to Create Software - the Corporate Way

Find an organisation which has designed a cool looking app. Order or download it - then play with it for a while. If it's any good, put a post on a code blogging site and get someone to copy it. Don't worry too much if it looks identical, just rebrand it, for example: if it's called Milky Way, call it Galaxy. Once you have it rolling off the production line, try to put the original competitor out of business, 'ayyy-sap'. This is essential to reduce long-term maintenance costs. Release software as a beta and fix it, well... someday (the industry standard, is measured in years). That's the de facto strategy. You can see how it looks amateurish if your upstart rival continues releasing stable software. Also, you can hike the price whenever you like if you have no competition. This is much more difficult to do if you have lots of competitors and they're all cheaper than you. Software hegemony rules! Don't even get me started on these Open Source beards. What's with fixing bugs for free? Why even bother with an economy at all - lets just eat wild berries and bang drums with our eyes closed. Crazy.

When copying, you rarely build up a portfolio of design skills to match those you would have, if you'd designed from first principles. It sounds unusual - but doesn't matter. You can make the software flabby and disorganised - like a 2 page letter, with 8 pages of P.S add-ons. It also doesn't matter if the disk spins like a cop car wheels, on a doughnut-run. Nothing really matters, when you have no competitors.

You will have to start piping money in another direction though: lawyers and marketing-types. I know they have bad reps, but they're really okay-guys; as long as you don't try to get to know them. The basic strategy here is to make far-reaching claims that you can't hope to meet, and use your lawyers to defend the pitch. Another technique which pays dividends, is to produce advertisements based around deep-sounding, but meaningless phrases. Make the customer who doesn't buy-in, feel like an outsider, or somehow inadequate and ill-informed. Cliché isn't so much unwelcome, as positively de rigeur. Max-out on your clichéd world-view, for example: that kids are way smarter than adults. An unusual concept, when you think about it, as all technology was designed and built by adults; you'd think someone, somewhere would know how to operate it.

If you've built the software and frankly it's extremely poor, so bad in fact that the natives are getting restless. I know it's tremendously ungrateful, what with being a visionary and all. But, things are looking really, really dicey business-wise. What to do? Easy.

Just give the old software a facelift: pretty it up with make-up and send it out again (Web 2.0 glass-buttons work here). Sure, beneath the surface it's the same old spaghetti-code: 'if x=y then goto line 10'. But now it'll fly through the interpreter. Computers have moved the ball along - all by themselves - in the intervening 3 years (Moore's law: at least 4 times faster during that period, check it!). Get the lawyers to rubber stamp every jot and tittle, then summon up those marketing types again (if they don't answer the phone, try a ouija board). Make the adverts, bigger, brasher, bolder and more frequent this time. Here are some deep but meaningless phrases (which you're welcome to steal). 'We Manage Your Dreams', 'Refresh Your Imagination', 'We Take the 'IF' Out of Life', 'Teaching the Universe Ideas', 'Better Than Love', 'Paths of Freedom', 'Extend Your Worlds', etc...

So, if you want to get into software, really - forget programming. You won't need it. Get to know some lawyers and marketeers. On a professional level though; socially, it won't be worth the billions you'll make. Get someone to copy the software and don't bother with the expense of employing them. Go to a freelance site and get them to reverse-bid each other out of the frame. You might even get them to pay you, as it's a prestigious project to add to their portfolio. Initially attempt to give the software away free, to clear out the market, but this can be risky. Governments don't like it and they don't play fair (if it looks like they're going to lose, they change the rules!). Just remember, when it comes to branding the box: slap stickers about social networks and mobile phones all over it - for the kids. Then watch it fly off the shelves. Remember: it doesn't matter if it doesn't deliver. Yep, you're getting it now. You can always fix it later.

Ciao.