Marketing research is extremely important. Truly market-led companies recognize that they need to always be in touch with what is happening in the marketplace (and so should you). Customer needs are continually changing, often in ways that are very subtle. If we consider the history of computing, where we went from enormous machines, to smaller ones, to reach the home personal computer; and from disconnect machines to the need to connect them as a network and then to the Internet. There were then so many resources online that there was a need to sort them(as Yahoo did), and them to search through them (as Google did). More recently, there were a need to take the physical life social experience online (as Facebook did) and now we can feel that the people need is to take the internet everywhere we go, and we are slowly going mobile. Many of the technological revolutions happen accidentally but most of them are the results of relevant research and observation. Online, there are many (cheap) ways a programmer can find out what people want:...

Cela consiste surtout à comprendre comment les gens dépensent leur argent, c’est-à-dire: qui achète, comment ils achètent et quels sont les critères de choix. Qui achète? Et surtout, qui est important dans la décision d'achat? Ce n'est pas toujours la même chose, la personne qui effectue l'achat est souvent différente de la personne qui va utiliser le produit. Les deux peuvent être différents de la personne avec le pouvoir et l'autorité financière de faire le choix ultime sur le produit à acheter (parents?). Et bien sûr, il peut y avoir quelques autres personnes influençant la décision finale ou essayant d'imposer leurs critères de choix. Comme tu vois, il peut y avoir beaucoup d'acteurs que tu auras à convaincre que ton produit est le bon. Comment ils achètent?...

It’s mostly about understanding how people spend their money, that is : who buys, how they buy and what the choice criteria are. who buys? And more importantly, who is important in the buying decision? That’s not always the same thing, the person that conducts the transaction is often different from the person that’s going to use the product. Both can be different from the person with the power and the financial authority to make the ultimate choice regarding which product to buy (parents?). And of course, there may be some other persons influencing the outcome of the decision or even trying to impose their choice criteria on the decision. As you see, there may be many actors that you would need to convince that your product is the right one. how do they buy?...

Que tu développes en freelance ou pour une compagnie, tu ne peux pas juste faire tes propres trucs dans ton coin et construire des programmes que tu trouves cool. Tu dois considérer le macro environnement et le micro environnement dans lequel tu évolues, t'adapter et prendre avantages des opportunités qui se présentent et minimiser les menaces potentielles. Ton micro environnement se compose des acteurs qui affectent tes capacités à produire de façon effective sur les marchés que tu as choisis. Ces acteurs sont...

Whether you are an independant developer or a company, you can't just do your own thing and make programs that you find cool. You have to consider the microenvironment and the macroenvironment in which you operate, to adapt and take advantages of emerging opportunities and to minimize potential threats. Your microenvironment consists of actors that affect your ability to produce effectively in your chosen markets. Those actors are...

J'ai pris une classe de marketing dans ma dernière année d'études. Au début je ne voyais pas l'intérêt pour un ingénieur en programmation d'apprendre de telles choses, puis j'ai réalisé combien c'est important. Je partage ici les points clés que je retiens, en ce qui concerne la façon dont les notions de marketing s'appliquent à l'industrie du logiciel. J'espère que cette note servira aux aspirant programmeurs et commerciaux. Commençons par définir le "Marketing". Il peut être défini de plusieurs façons mais au fond, c'est la réalisation des objectifs de l'entreprise en répondant aux besoins du client. En fait, la notion de marketing est une philosophie de business qui mets le client et la satisfaction du client au centre des choses....

I had to take a marketing class in my last year. At first, I didn't see the point for a software developer to learn those things, but then I realised that it's very important. I am sharing here, the key points I am keeping, regarding how marketing applies to the software business. I hope this note would be of some interest to both (aspiring) programmers and marketers. Now there is a lot that could be said on that topic, here I just try to stick to the key points, and as it’s still a lot of information, I would rather not send it all at once. Instead I would spread that as small blog articles. Let's first define "Marketing". It can be defined in many ways but it's basically the achievement of corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs better than the competition. Indeed, the marketing concept is a philosophy of business that puts the customer and customer satisfaction at the center of things. Why should developers care about it?...

5 years ago, if I was told that I could run a blog, I would not have believed it. As a software engineer, I was spending more time designing and writing programs. However, a priori, nothing suggested that I could write good articles too....

Si tu ne t'y connais pas en programmation, je devrais commencer par te dire qu'un langage, c'est juste un système de communication et un langage de programmation, au fond, c'est un langage artificiel conçu pour communiquer des instructions à une machine, typiquement un ordinateur. Il existe de nombreux langages de programmations. Certains sont plus populaires que d'autres. Certains sont plus récents, certains sont plus puissants dans une certaine mesure. Dans un monde idéal, chaque langage de programmation a un but précis. Donc un ingénieur devrait être capable de s'adapter au projet en cours et d'utiliser les technologies optimales pour ce projet. Mais la vérité est que,...

If you are not into programming, I need to start by telling you that a programming language is basically an artificial language (system of communication) designed to communicate instructions to a machine, typically a computer. Now there are a lot of programming languages out there. Some are more popular than others, some are more recent, some are more powerful to some extent. In an ideal world, each programming language serves a specific purpose. So an engineer should be able to adapt to the on going project and choose the optimal technologies. But the truth is,...