Yup, me too. And it's the worst code I've ever written. Miranda IM. Millions of downloads, popular for 14 years. I got bigger than I ever imagined it could.
What have I worked on since: ACDZip, ACDSee, Tracktion, EAW Resolution, SPIN Review. ACDSee was a brief success, but the rest - meh.
At least your failed projects have names, mine never even got that far! But seriously, how should you answer the question if the honest answer is something you did 10+ years ago? I could talk about that project all day long, but I can sense a "What have you done for me lately" reaction if all I have to hang my hat on is something that happened when Bill Clinton was President!
Thank you for sharing this, peacemaker and FigBug.
This magic-bullet interview question had me depressed and made me feel like a failure. I too have nearly 15 years of professional experience. My last projects that I can show off were 4 and 8 years ago.
I don't feel like a failure anymore. I got a reminder that success depends on blind luck a lot and is rather overrated. Hard work, improvement and patience are still essential.
P.S. I have used both Miranda and ACDSee in the past. They reached my highest criteria for software, that few applications reach – were small, fast, reliable and very useful. I wish FigBug best of luck.
Knowing that would make me more likely to hire you. On the one hand, you recognize it was the worst code, and you've improved since. On the other hand, you recognize that going into an ivory tower and designing perfect code, is not necessarily required for success.
Any given project will be calibrated somewhere between the extremes of "just ship it" and "take 5 years to make a perfect 1.0". A developer who, based on experience, is flexible enough to calibrate themselves to match the project -- who can adapt to reasonable balances of "do it faster" vs. "do it better" -- is valuable.
Yeah, if I had to answer "what project did you work on that most changed the life of your customers" it would be my first post-college job where I created a market space that didn't exist before.
But, like you, what does that say about the next 15 years of my career? I'm a waaaaay better developer than I was at the end of my first job.
It is important we understand the words that we left out of the original article.
The point of the question isn't to get an impressive project. While we, the interviewee would love to say, guidance computer on Voyager or the Ray Tracer used in Toy Story; the point of the question is get to know the candidate and how they operate.
