Things to know before launching your own app in 2020. That and more from the week in software engineering

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Could 2020 finally be the year you decide to dust off that app idea you've been kicking around and go into the exciting world of indie dev? After all, the economy is good (by some measures), and app markets went through a considerable amount of growing and maturing over the last year.

This week, I gathered advice and thoughts on launching your own app or service from software engineers with experience in doing so (or nearly doing so). Below are the main takeaways that I think you should know before taking the plunge yourself.

Try thinking niche. "You don't have to be the next Apple."

App market downloads hit an all-time global high last year, and analysts expect that to carry on to 2020. In other words, there's plenty of pie for everyone, so if you're tinkering endlessly with your app idea trying to imagine how it could compete with TikTok or Venmo, you're doing it wrong.

"Your goal should be to find a need and fill it; if you can elevate that into something greater, that's amazing," AT&T engineering manager Taylor Dobson wrote on LinkedIn. "Do you want to make millions or billions off of an app? Of course! But can you get by making ~$500-$1000 per application per month off of 10 apps? 100%."

Brush up on the business of subscriptions

It's obvious that a little business acumen goes a long way in creating and operating your own app, but a particular revenue model that's continued to grow in the category over recent years is subscriptions. You're going to need to learn the ins and outs of subscriptions if you want to optimize the earning power of your app in 2020. 

A blog this month by James Long, the creator of personal finance app Actual, provides great info on operating a subscription-based app. Included in his piece are bits on how to make sense of churn rates, figuring annual vs monthly billing and giving away free trials without losing your shirt.

It's not all about smartphone apps. Wearables and other smart devices are growing.

You're not going to want to be so single-minded about your app idea, either. Numbers at the end of last year show that smartwatches and fitness wearables are starting to show needle-moving growth in units sold (pushed primarily by fitness app, for what it's worth). A similar boom is happening in the ever-diversifying smart home gadget category. Porting your smartphone app idea to devices for customers wrists and living rooms could be more of a winning strategy moving forward than ever before.

"[Mobile] has almost reached the saturation point. Now the focus is shifting towards wearable devices, starting from watches, bracelets and smart goggles," wrote Deepanjan Paul, an application engineer for 7-Eleven R&D Labs. "Now I see mobile as the GUI for the IoT edge devices ranging from controlling light bulbs to getting the temperature on your screen."

This year is a great time to launch your app, but last year would have been better

And even though today's positive trends in app markets and small business profits seem to make for good timing to launch your career as an indie app dev, most who have experience in the field say that there is never an exact "right time" to launch. Instead, it's all about just getting started as soon as you can.

"I believe in the saying that you should never time the market. If the market has a need for your app, then the best timing to go primetime was yesterday," said Tony Mu, a software engineer at Wayfair.

Sometimes, as freelance engineer Michael McGlothlin wrote, it's not even smart to wait until you feel like your app is ready.

"I need to listen to my own advice. Put something out there for free and then take the feedback and just keep refining," he said. "I’ve created apps for employers which I have published but my own apps I’ve never taken beyond a few test users. It is easy to keep putting it off to fix a few more issues and never progressing beyond that point."

Are you a software engineer who has launched your own app and small business around it? Share your thoughts on your experiences in the comments below.

Tech updates...

• PyTorch 1.4 was released
• Vulkan 1.2 was released
• Notepad++ v7.8.3 was released
• The Microsoft Edge browser was released

More from this week…

"I like doing technical talks, but what if I did a talk about mental health?" In a new interview this week with Business Insider, Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI) founder Ed Finkler and advisory board member talked about how he's trying to start a conversation about the mental health blindspot in tech. The industry may have an “open-source culture” when it comes to work, and that should naturally flow into talking about mental health, he said. The foundation’s research shows 51% of tech professionals have been diagnosed with a mental health condition compared to the 19.1% of U.S. adults at large. "Tech seems to attract high-functioning motivated people that have high expectations of themselves," commented OSMI advisor and psychologist Jen Akullian. "When you pair that with an industry that expects a lot from you and an industry that's innovative, it means that for innovation to happen, there needs to be a lot of failure, and a lot of things have to break."

What do you think of OSMI's mission? Is mental health too often ignored in tech worker culture?

Encryption experts puzzled/concerned again by yet another DOJ call for "backdoor." After U.S. Attorney General William Barr Monday asked Apple on Monday to allow access to the locked iPhone belonging to the gunman behind the December Pensacola naval air station shooting, software engineers took to LinkedIn, once again, to raise questions of whether our government knows how this whole encryption thing works. "Perhaps the A.G. hasn’t been briefed by the right tech folks to explain how encryption/unlocking works on iPhone?" wrote Rosa L. Smothers, SVP of Cyber Operations. This could, however, be the least troubling of scenarios for security experts, with some now resigned to thinking the DOJ knows exactly how encryption works and the department wants to use this occasion to put public pressure on the company to create a backdoor for its iDevice security measures. Apple has, so far, not budged on the idea of either unlocking any single phone or building any special law enforcement access methods.

Will security designers/engineers and the DOJ ever find a common solution on the topic of encryption? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Squashing DevOps bugs. What do you want to do after a long day of working with Kubernetes containers at the office? How about going home to search for Kubernetes codebase bugs! The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which maintains the Google-built continuous deployment tool, announced a Kubernetes bug bounty program this week. With more and more enterprises adopting this growing open-source platform in its pipeline, the CNCF is smartly opting for a proactive security approach with sweetner bounty rewards ranging from $100 to $10,000. Go get'em!

What was the most interesting thing to you this week in software engineering? Please join the conversation in the comments below. See you next week!