[Like a lot of things while I've been working on Project X, recommending Rocky Smolin's "From Program to Product" (Apress, 2008) has been on hold for too long. No more. After reading Rocky's book I was happy to write the foreword for it because it's a extremely useful blueprint for all of the contract programmers out there who realize they are but a few short steps away from a saleable product. If you've already made the jump from picking up a steady paycheck to working for yourself, it's time to ready Rocky's book.

Here's my foreword to Rocky's book. Highly recommended.]

From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product is a book that could have saved me about ten years of pointlessly doing the same thing over and over. More to the point, it might just save you from the same career mistake.

Let me explain.

Every professional programmer in this industry—whether they freelance from project to project or work from job to job—sooner or later arrives at the point when they have to ask themselves, “Is this all there is?” You’ve gotten to the point when you no longer stumble talking to potential customers, when the earth doesn’t necessarily move for you every time the technology advances, when you fit comfortably in your skin as a professional programmer.

Then what do you do? How do you get from the local max of being a competent and proficient programmer for others to being something else? What else is there?
Now there’s nothing wrong with doing what you’re good at, year after year, project after project. It’s fun, you learn new things, you meet interesting people, you may get paid to go to foreign places, and it pays the bills.

But it doesn’t get you excited anymore.

What Rocky does in this book is explore another way to go than down that predictable career path of freelancing or salaried work: he shows you step by step, issue by issue, how to go from developing software applications for other people to developing something better—a product.

From Program to Product lays out the mental and educational process you need to follow to go from software developer to product developer. It is not necessarily an easy transformation. You won’t be the same programmer you were after you finish Rocky’s book because you’ll have learned how to see your software in an entirely different way.

From the bare beginnings where Rocky invites you to see what you’re doing in a new and different way, he takes you through defining a product, not just an app; learning how to see your product from the outside in instead of from the inside out; thinking about how to price your product and understanding the core economic reality of selling software; dealing with the legal aspects of selling intellectual property without being mugged; and coping with some of the other tasks you need to master such as internationalization and documentation to get your product truly ready for the market.

By the way, I should make clear here that while I see Rocky’s book through code monkey colored glasses, this is a book not just for programmers. If you’ve hired a programmer (and Rocky has some great advice on doing just that) to implement your vision of a software application, this book will help you with both the big picture of just how to direct your project into a commercial product, and the small but important details like End User License Agreements (EULAs) you need to get right to protect your investment.

One of the things I really like about this book is that while Rocky shares his experience and insight as someone who has successfully gone from program to product, he goes beyond that to interview others who bring their own insights and experiences to the buffet you get to feast at.

In a lot of ways, Rocky has written the perfect prequel to my book, Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality (Apress, 2006). Where I focus mainly on what to do after you’ve gotten your product to sell, Rocky covers the hard ground of getting to that point. That’s why I said at the top of this foreword I’d wished Rocky had written this book a decade ago—it would have immeasurably helped me go that first step from developer to micro-ISV.

And that’s why I recommend Rocky’s book to you now. If you’ve been doing what you do for too long, if you’re looking for a clear path to break free from being just a programmer, Rocky is offering you what you need.

It’s time to take the red pill.

Bob Walsh
Sonoma, California
February 11, 2008

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