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Or “How to keep your sanity while being an app publisher”

It has been roughly a year since I’ve published my first significant Android app (DiskDigger), and roughly a month since I’ve published my first paid app (DiskDigger Pro). Over the course of this time, I’ve learned some valuable lessons about human nature, specifically about the nature of the humans that leave star-ratings and write reviews about your app. If you’re a fellow app developer, I hope you’ll commiserate with this post. And if you’re a newcomer to the Google Play Store ecosystem (or the Apple App Store, for that matter), take heart.

Of course, this article assumes that your app actually works, and does what it promises. It assumes that negative reviews are not expected for your app, and come as a surprise to you.

People Will Be People

We’re all familiar with YouTube comments, and the breathtaking stupidity to which the commenters are guaranteed to stoop. Most of this idiocy comes from the fact that the commenters are able to write anonymously (or at least semi-anonymously), which is enough to open the floodgates of ignorance, hatred, bigotry, trolling, and everything else. Much of this mentality translates right over to app reviews.

If you’re an app developer, you will get bad reviews. Get used to it. This is for a very simple reason: there’s a significant imbalance in the activation threshold for writing a good review versus a poor review. In order for someone to give your app a five-star rating, and a good review, they have to be extremely impressed by it. However, in order for someone to give a one-star rating, they only have to find a single wrong thing in the app! Maybe it’s some portion of the interface they find annoying, or some behavior they didn’t expect, etc.

This is fairly similar to reviews of restaurants that we find on Yelp. Most of the positive reviews on Yelp come from people who write reviews as a hobby (who make it a point to write reviews of every place they visit), whereas the negative reviews are from people who happen to catch the wait staff having an off day, and write a review on Yelp when they otherwise wouldn’t.

You Can’t Please Everybody

If you worry about pleasing all of your users, you will burn out. For one thing, if you try implementing everyone’s feature requests, your app will become a disjointed mess, and will likely be used by fewer people than before. Choose very carefully which feature requests to implement, and acknowledge that certain users simply cannot be helped by your app, even if their poor review is constructive.

And another thing: if you try implementing everyone’s feature requests, you will develop feelings of resentment towards your users when they continue to give poor ratings (which they will, for the reasons stated above). You will say, “How dare you rate my app poorly, when I’ve spent so much time implementing features that others have asked for!” These kinds of emotions are highly destructive, and pave the way towards madness.

Don’t Expect Them to Read Instructions

Asking your users to read any kind of instructions prior to using your app is asking too much. Case in point: My DiskDigger app only works with rooted devices. I state this in the app description several times, and very plainly. I also put the word “root” in the title of the app. And yet, there have still been people who wrote a review to the effect of, “When I launch the app, it says I need a rooted device. Why wasn’t I warned about this?” No, I’m not joking. Read the reviews for yourself, if you like.

If your app requires the user to have any kind of a priori information before using the app, be prepared to receive poor ratings from users who weren’t aware of it.

Other Oddities

Some people seem to think that giving a one-star rating is a good way of asking for help. I have received numerous one-star ratings where the user says, “Can someone help root my phone?” or, “Can you implement feature X?” I’m not sure how to deal with such “reviews,” except to shrug my shoulders and move on, since the sight of the one star is enough of a turn-off to not want to help this person to begin with. Also, while it’s possible for them to change their rating after they’ve been helped, the time-to-reward ratio is really not worth it. They’re always welcome to contact me directly, anyway.

On the flip side, other people have written five-star reviews in order to come to my defense against the one-star ratings. While I certainly appreciate these kinds of sentiments (since they balance out the trolls somewhat), I would rather get uniformly honest reviews of the software itself, rather than meta-bickering in the comments.

Responding to Reviews

The Google Play Store allows developers to respond to each review. However, the current mechanism for doing this is deeply flawed, because the responses are posted publicly, underneath each of the reviews!

Furthermore, the responses are limited to 350 characters! This is hardly ever sufficient to thoroughly answer the user’s questions, or guide them towards resolving their issues.

All of this creates a hostile environment, where the developer is encouraged to come down to the same level as the reviewers. That’s not to say that the reviewers aren’t smart, or don’t have legitimate issues or concerns. It simply encourages the developer to become defensive, or even argumentative, towards the users. It’s almost as if Google is saying, “Hey, look what this guy wrote about your app! Are you gonna let him get away with that? Use these 350 characters to stand up for yourself!”

Lastly, the very notion of “responding to reviews” encourages the developer to constantly check the reviews. For a developer who is prone to OCD (like myself), this kind of thing can be very hazardous to one’s mental health! Even now, a part of myself is desperate to log on to my Play Store console, and check for any new activity.

Suggestions to Google

Here are a couple suggestions that would improve the Play Store experience for users, as well as for developers:

Before allowing a user to write a review, ask if the user wants to contact the developer for support! It’s baffling why Google doesn’t display contact and support information for each app much more prominently than it currently does.

If the user selects anything less than five stars, make a text box that slides out and says, “Having issues or any questions regarding this app? Ask the developer for help!”

If that’s too much to ask, then at least allow developers to respond to reviews privately, and directly over email. Responding privately instantly changes the dynamic of the conversation. It also consolidates the number of support venues that the developer has to worry about, since the issue has been moved to email, which should be the primary support venue.

And if that’s too much to ask, then at least notify developers when the user has read the response, as well as when the user updates or amends the rating to which you replied.

Like Water Off a Duck’s Back

Let’s compare app reviews to restaurant reviews one more time. There are several key differences between the two.

A successful, established restaurant might get, say, five reviews on Yelp per week, at the most. Therefore, the manager of the restaurant might do well to read each review (and will have time to do so), to see things like which menu items are trending and which ones aren’t, how the service staff is performing, and so on.

However, a successful app can get dozens of reviews per day. It’s therefore completely impractical for the developer to pay attention to each one. At this point in the app’s lifecycle, it’s more useful to look at the trends of your star-rating (e.g. on a weekly basis). If the rating takes a dive shortly after you publish an update, it might indicate that the update contains a bug, and merits further investigation. (If the app really does contain a bug, you’ll receive messages from users via email, anyway.)

There’s one more crucial difference between app reviews and restaurant reviews. Restaurant reviews are generally written by intelligent adults with a discerning palate. App reviews, however, can be written by anyone in the world, including 13-year-old trolls, 90-year-old senile grandparents, and everyone in between.

If you haven’t guessed this by now, the proper way to deal with negative reviews is to simply let them roll off you, like water off a duck’s back. Most importantly, don’t let them get to you: don’t let them affect your work or break your spirit.   They will always be there; get over it.

Whether or not you make money from writing software, it should at least make you happy. If you find that it isn’t, then you’re doing it wrong. The fact that a single other person wants to use your software should be reward enough. The fact that your app gets occasional negative reviews simply means that your app has reached that level of popularity, and that’s something to celebrate, not fret over.

I’m pleased to announce the release of DiskDigger Pro for Android! This new version of DiskDigger is capable of recovering (carving) over 20 different types of files from your Android device’s internal memory, or an external memory card. This includes support for .JPG photos, .MP3 and .WAV audio, .MP4 and .3GP video, raw camera formats, Microsoft Office files (.DOC, .XLS, .PPT), and more!

As with the non-Pro version of DiskDigger for Android, this app requires root privileges on the Android device. The non-Pro version of DiskDigger will remain available (for free!) on the Google Play store, and can still be used for recovering .JPG photos.

So what are you waiting for? Go to the Google Play store on your Android device, and install DiskDigger Pro today!

Edsger Dijkstra was absolutely right when he said, “Programming in BASIC causes brain damage.” (Lacking a source for that quote, I found an even better quote that has a source: “It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”)

When I reflect on my (not-too-distant) programming infancy, I often think about what I might have done differently, like what technologies I could have learned, which ones I should have avoided, or what algorithms I could have used in old software I had written, and so on.

But there’s one thing that really stands out more than anything else: starting out with BASIC was the worst thing I could have done.

I’m not sure how useful it is to talk about this now, since BASIC has pretty much gone extinct, and rightly so, but it feels good to get it off my chest anyway.

My parents and I immigrated to the U.S. in 1991, when I was 10 years old, and I had never laid eyes on a personal computer before that time. During my family’s first few months in the States, we acquired a 80286 IBM PC, which was probably donated to us by an acquaintance (since the 80386 architecture was already prevalent at that time, and 80486 was the cutting edge).

I also happened to come across a book called BASIC and the Personal Computer by Dwyer and Critchfield. I was instantly fascinated by the prospect of programming the computer, and the boundless possibilities that computer software could provide.

However, I made a critical error that would hinder my programming development for at least a year: I reached the erroneous conclusion that BASIC was the only language there was!

I had no idea that BASIC was an interpreted language, or indeed what difference there is between an interpreted and a compiled language. I thought that all software (including the games I played, Windows 3.0, Word Perfect, etc.) was written in BASIC! This unfortunately led me down an ill-fated path of self-study, which took an even stronger effort to undo.

I learned all there was to know about BASIC programming in a few months (starting with GW-BASIC, then moving to QuickBASIC), and then I started to notice certain things about the software I was trying to write.

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t make my programs be as fast as other software I used. I couldn’t understand why this was the case. Also, the graphics routines in BASIC were virtually nonexistent, so I was baffled how anyone could write games with elaborate graphics, scrolling, and responsive controls. I was eager to start developing games that would rival my favorite games at the time, like Prince of Persia, Crystal Caves, and Commander Keen.  But the graphics and responsiveness of those games was orders of magnitude beyond what I could achieve with my BASIC programs.

With all this frustration on my mind, I was determined to find the reason why my programs were so limited. I soon found a solution, but once again it was the wrong one! I stumbled upon some example BASIC code that used assembly language subroutines (encoded as DATA lines in the BASIC program), as well as INTERRUPT routines that took advantage of the underlying DOS and BIOS services.

This led me down the path of learning Intel 286 assembly language (another few months of studying), and encoding it into my BASIC programs! This solved the issue of responsiveness, but there was still the issue of graphics, or lack thereof. Fortunately, I found a book at the local public library about VGA graphics programming. Even more fortunately, the book contained sample source code, using a language they called C….

And my eyes were open!

It hit me like a freight train. I almost burst out laughing right there at the library. I realized that I had been learning the wrong things all along! (Of course learning assembly language was sort of right, but my application of it was still misguided.)

Learning C and C++ from that point forward wasn’t particularly difficult, but I still feel like it would have been a lot easier if my mind hadn’t been polluted by the programming style and structure that I learned from BASIC. It makes me wonder how things might have been different, had I accidentally picked up a book on C++ instead of a book on BASIC during my earliest exploits with computers.

In all fairness, I’m sure I learned some rudimentary programming principles from BASIC, but I’m not sure that this redeems BASIC as a learning tool. There were just too many moments where, while learning C++, I thought, “So that’s the way it really works!” And I’m sure it’s also my fault for trying to learn everything on my own, instead of seeking guidance from someone else who might have told me, “You’re doing it wrong.”

All of this makes me wonder what programming language would be appropriate for teaching today’s generation of young programmers. Based on my comically tragic experience with BASIC, my gut instinct is to advise aspiring developers to stay away from interpreted languages (such as Python), or at the very least understand that the interpreted language they’re learning is useless for developing actual software. I don’t think there’s any harm in diving right into a compiled language (such as C++), and learning how it hugs the underlying hardware in a way that no interpreted language ever could.

That being said, I don’t wish any of this to reflect negatively on Dwyer and Critchfield’s BASIC and the Personal Computer. It’s a solid book, and I still own the original copy. There’s no denying that it was one of the first books that got me interested in programming, and for that I’m thankful. However, sometimes I regret that I didn’t find Stroustrup’s The C++ Programming Language at the same garage sale as where I found BASIC and the Personal Computer. Or, alternatively, perhaps Dwyer and Critchfield could have included the following disclaimer in large bold letters: This is not the way actual software is written! But perhaps it’s time to let it go. I didn’t turn out so bad, right?

I’m happy to announce that DiskDigger is now available for Android devices (phones and tablets running rooted Android 2.2 and above)! You can get the app by searching for it on the Google Play Store from your Android device.  Please note that the app only works on rooted devices.

At the moment, the app is in an early Beta stage, meaning that it’s not meant to be as powerful or complete as the original DiskDigger for Windows, and is still in active development.   Nevertheless, it uses the same powerful carving techniques to recover .JPG and .PNG images (the only file types supported so far; more will follow) from your device’s memory card or internal memory.

So, if you’ve taken a photo with your phone or tablet and then deleted it, or even reformatted your memory card, DiskDigger can recover it!

I’ve written a quick guide that has more information and a brief introduction to using the app!   If you have questions, comments, or suggestions about the app, don’t hesitate to share them!

Update: thanks to Lifehacker for writing a nice article!