[VA] New update #011 available in my HP site (11 new files 11)

[Christoph Giesselink]

Yes, it sometimes frustrating looking at the number of downloads. So when I would use the no. of downloads on my site as meter for continuing my program development, I had to stop everything, immediately. From this point of view it's a massive waste of time. Some programs may have two downloads in a month?

On the other side it's a hobby, did some of you ever count the hours you spend on your hobby? Did you ever count the hours you sit infront of your TV and do ... nothing?

So why I put writing computer programs into the section of a hobby and not as hard work. I don't write programs in my free time for others, the programs I published are the programs I wanted to have fore some reasons. In consequence, when I don't want to have it, I don't spend time on it. So when you want to have addional features in my programs, you have to do it by your own or you have to convince me, that _I_ want to have this feature. If you only want this, I don't take care of it...

Pressure, stress...

In general I try to avoid any promise of publishing date or features in a new version for the programs I made as a hobby. When I have no motivation to do it, I don't do it. It's finished when it's finished.

An anecdote about publishing Emu71/Win in July 2011. The program development for version 1.0 was more or less finished in January 2011 about 6 month before the publishing date, but the final documentation for the program and the documentation of the Virtual HP-IL concept was still missing in January. Have I ever told you, that I hate writing documentation?

So I stopped further working on it and instead, getting more fun, I fixed the problem in Emu42 decoding the Redeye protocol which was necessary for the printer feature published in fall 2011. So when a hobby don't make fun any more and when it's only stress, than it's time to quit...

Only some personal thoughts

Christoph