Hey there. My name is Neil Mathew. I'm primarily an Android Developer but I do dabble in other languages, platforms and frameworks.

Whatever app I build, I make sure that it is useful. I develop software to solve problems and design it for a specific audience. And I've almost always been an active user of my own apps.

I released my first android app to the play store in college. It was an attendance calculator which could determine how many classes you could safely miss to maintain your minimum required attendance percentage. Despite it's rough design and basic functionality, It grew popular because it was useful. So, I worked on it further to build a full-fledged attendance planner with colour-coded timetable, daily attendance alerts, holiday reminders, and strategic bunk information for each course. Within an year, the app had over 3 millions views a month. Students were hooked because it made their lives easy. It certainly made my schedule more convenient to manage.

I learnt a lot through that app. I learnt to monetise using ads which would pay for my backend costs. I started receiving hundreds of emails with feature requests and bug reports which I would filter through and prioritise. With the growing popularity of the app, I started partnering with other college-based initiatives. I learnt to sell and market the app through direct interactions, posters, forums, blogs, social pages and whatever I could get my hands on. And I tracked the growth through a number of analytics tools. It was fun.

It's been a long time since then and I've learnt so much more about design, documentation, planning, delivery, code quality, feature scoping and product management. But the principles I started with haven't changed.

"Vain is the word of the philosopher that does not heal the suffering of man"
      - Epicurus

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