THE ART OF SOFTWARE
In the age of mass production, craftsmanship is a rarity. Why? Because craftsmanship takes time. It takes patience. It takes a deep, personal connection to the product, and an understanding of the needs it fulfills.
And while, at first glance, it might seem odd to talk about software as a craft, that’s exactly the way we think about it at Softpal. In fact, we see software as the ultimate in craftsmanship, a place where the work of the mind meets the work of the hands to create something amazing.
''(We hold fast to the idea )that the sales and marketing budget of a tech company shouldn’t outpace its allocation for research and development. So we put 60% of our revenue back into R&D. Most (cloud) companies routinely spend close to that on sales and marketing. Which raises deeper questions: Are you a software company, or a marketing company that happens to sell software? Should we spend money marketing to you, or should we spend it on building products for you?''
This belief informs everything we do.
The science of craft
Craftspeople don’t pick up their skills overnight. It isn’t learned from just hitting the books and cramming for an exam. It takes real-world practice that puts those skills to the test. It takes years of training with masters, working until the apprentice can forget their own path. We don’t think software is any different.
''It’s why we’ve built our own apprentice-style system in Softpal University, an in-house program that sources and trains (high school) students in coding and design. Participants spend nearly a year learning the ropes, and then are placed in teams where they serve as junior engineers until they’ve achieved mastery of the skill. This apprenticeship model creates consistency and deep knowledge; information is transmitted over months and years, not hours and days''
Because we’re private (with no plans to ever go public) we aren’t forced to optimize production for next quarter’s profits. Delivering a great product takes time. It takes perseverance. It takes patience, something out of fashion in today’s venture-capital backed technology space.
Designed to delight
Good design evolves to meet the user where they are, rather than jumping them out of their routine and making them scramble for the back button. It innovates the user’s experience rather than ending it up.
Designing products that fulfill genuine needs doesn’t happen on a whim. They’re born from a process of careful planning and design. They come from years of practice and refinement. Most companies don’t have the patience to do that with one product, let alone 40. But Softpal is different.
Softpal Creator, our custom app builder, is one such example of our values craftsmanship and empathy for the user in action. Through years of observation, we figured out where customers succeeded, where they needed help, and where they failed in app building, and designed a drag-and-drop interface simple enough for a non-engineer to use. Alongside that, we built a coding language (Deluge) underlying the product that is sophisticated enough to create even the most complicated of apps. some time, some attention to detail, and some commitment, we managed to design a product that pleases novice and expert users alike.
That doesn’t happen by chance.
Doing it right
There are no shortcuts to quality. Good enough is never good enough, at least passionate about your work and the products you build.
Great software is more than a feat of engineering, it’s a work of art. Great software requires the visionary eye of an artist melded with the skilled hands of a craftsperson. They combine to produce something that is not only beautiful, but that enhances the lives of those who come into contact with it.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was Softpal. It’s taken more than a decade to perfect our comprehensive suite. We’re willing to give things on time and they need to take. If it’s not done right, it probably isn’t worth doing.
Other Perspectives
The art of software
In the age of mass production, craftsmanship is a rarity. Why? Because craftsmanship takes time. It takes patience. It takes a deep, personal connection to the product, and an understanding of the needs it fulfills. And while, at first glance,…
On dollars and sense
There’s no such thing as easy money. There shouldn’t be easy spending, either. And that’s one of the big problems in today’s tech company culture.
How we price and package our software
Business software is overpriced and unnecessarily complex. High price allows software companies to support sales and marketing costs that are often greater than half of their entire revenue. No other industry enjoys this luxury. Software complexity adds implementation and integration costs that track on multiples—not mere…
