Okay, I think this is good advice. I'm going to try and follow it myself, at the very least.

As an indie app developer, you have an itch. Well, you have many itches, but this morning, you notice another. For me, it's desktop blogging. I want to make a PC app that posts to blogger, which is what I'm using right now. So I start rabbit-holing the Blogger API, again.

A little while in, I start having an internal dialog...

Me1: "You know, I wanted to move my blog to something custom built on Node anyhow. Wouldn't that be a better use of my time?"

Me2 googles blogging engines. There are plenty.
Me2: "But you can't sell that nearly as easily as you can sell a fully featured desktop app."

Me1: "Okay, fine."

A few minutes of studying the Google Core API nuget package (doesn't install on Xamarin, as it requires Powershell in the build script, among other issues), and I'm back.
  • Me1: "This is a cluster^H^H^H^H^H non-trivial."
  • Me3: "Okay, right. So you have about, what, eighteen other projects going now?"
    Me1: "Yes."
  • 3: "Do any of those stand to produce more cash than this one?"
  • 1: "Yes."
  • "Aren't there other apps that do what you want to make?"
  • "Well, not really, not exactly the way..."
  • "Shaddup! [slap] Don't be an idiot. You know that I mean if there competent desktop editors that would allow you to do what you want to do, give or take. Are there?"
  • I guess so. Mars Edit and Desk, right? And Desk is eating up all the air in the room anyhow.
  • Then use that, and put $50 towards buying back your idiotic time wasted on Blogger APIs. If you come back to this itch after you've finished EVERYTHING with more upside, fine.
  • You're probably right.
  • Given enough time and common sense, you usually are.
 So that was fun. Who doesn't love internal dialog?

But the bottom line seems to be that if you try to scratch every itch by yourself, you won't scratch many well, or won't scratch many quickly, or will continue itching a lot. Let that be a lesson to you all.

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