I think what drupeek says applies to this as well. You can be working on something and not really know what it is. I wrote this app a quite ago, only took me about 5 days to write it because it was quite simple, but it’s been years since I finally understood what it was for.

In designing another system recently, I wrote down my entire thought process as it developed in the form of questions and answers to myself. When I read it back now I can see how I had this mixed up set of ideas and was actually quite confused. Then, as you read down, things start to become clearer and ideas become more developed. I guess it still has quite a long way to go as well because things certainly aren’t as clear as I would like them to be.

So the point I’m making is that definition and clarity can take as long, and sometimes--although I think this is infrequent--longer, than the software development.

As for the question of whether you should blog about it. I think it’s a difficult call. In a way you could say this story has wasted everyone’s time because I still have no idea what the app drupeek’s developing is about. But on the other hand we wouldn’t be having this conversation now were it not for it.

Interesting... how did you write an app without knowing what it is for? It seems very backwards to write an app (or create anything, really) and then later figure out what to use it for.

Well I wrote it with one thing in mind and when I finished it, it didn’t really help with that thing much. I was pretty sure it would be useful for other things though. Since then I’ve discovered a couple of other uses for it. I think this happens more when you write something that is very abstract as this is.