I help you locate bars: Tarun Chawla, Application developer

Imagine being able to locate the direction of the nearest bar simply by tapping on your phone. This happens courtesy an augmented reality application, for use in New York or Chicago, and I am the techie who made it possible. This is just one example. As an app developer, I work behind the scenes to develop and test apps before they are publicly available.

So you too have a brilliant idea for an app — say an Angry Bird killer for the gaming world — but find that writing code is like deciphering the Rohonc Codex? Or perhaps your business could do with an iPhone- or iPadfriendly app that can keep customers instantly updated about your products.

Either way, I’m your guy. I work for New York-based Ophio, a software development service provider. The company has an Indian development centre in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The first six months with the company were spent on training and the focus was on learning how to make apps and even test them. But over the past one year, I’ve worked on seven to eight commercial apps.

Self Competence Counts: The least challenging one was a banking app that had a login page like any bank’s website. Boring. However, the locate-the-bar app, my personal favourite, was an entirely different story. All the apps I’ve created can eventually be used by me and my friends, which is not necessarily the case with enterprise software and their developers.

The apps I work on are not a product of my own imagination; they are not based on my own ideas or expectations. I make apps on-demand for clients. While my job takes care of the coding and the app’s structure, all the branding and marketing is done by a team of designers in the UK. But my role requires negligible contact with the client, apart from initially touching base on email to understand the specifications and features required. This means I don’t have to worry about client-servicing or client chasing. Zero time lapses and zero roadblocks make me entirely dependent on my own competence.

No Scope for Multi-tasking: The one-time cost to develop an app is around $50,000, and the process typically takes a month. However, clients with a tight deadlines and even tighter budgets, usually start-ups, can have a different arrangement. In such cases we work with a small division of future profits. All app developers are required to think in a certain way, and minimalism is the rule of thumb. Think clean apps, clean designs, clean layouts, clean codes, even a clean office space. All that matters is the size and quality of the code you are writing.

In the case of mobile apps in particular, where people pay per kilobyte to download your data, size really matters. Another challenge is to be able to identify and separate features that an app actually needs from the pointless ones; there can be frills but clutter is taboo. And don’t mistake minimal for simple — app development can be very complicated and requires days to execute.

I work on only one project at a time, since multitasking isn’t conducive to creating a great app. There is no way to install apps that have not been publicly launched and made available on iTunes, so developers like me have a special development account called Provisioning Profiles. This account allows me to put testing stage apps in my phone for 30-40 days, and I pay a licensing fee for this. So, in essence, I get to test most apps long before they are launched.