Born to Code, Part II

At the end of part I of this post, I had given up computers to try my hand at cartooning. A short version of the rest of the story may be found in this post, but here's the long version...

I survived high school by doodling during many of my classes, and I always wanted to create my own comic strip. So I finally gave it a try. My daily comic strip Dexter appeared in the student newspaper at the University of Tennessee from 1989-1991, and I had a blast doing it. The strip won several awards during its short run, so I had high hopes of turning it into a career.

As luck would have it, my first job out of college was as an editorial cartoonist for a local newspaper. It didn't last long (the paper went belly-up), but it did enable me to hone my skills a bit. At the same time, I submitted "Dexter" to various comic strip syndicates, hoping it would catch the eye of an editor.

It didn't.

After months of submitting my work, I received nothing more than a pile of rejection notices. Realizing that it might be a while before my comic strip career took off, I found a temporary job to pay the bills. And that was a lucky move for me, since the temp job had me surrounded by "modern" PCs - and this was 1993, right when the web started to take off. It struck me that the rise of the web meant that I didn't really need a publisher for my work. Why submit my comics to syndicates when I could publish them myself?

I decided to jump back into the computing world to figure this web thing out. Most nights I stayed after work to teach myself how to use a PC, and I remember convincing my supervisor to upgrade from DOS to Windows 3.1 so that I could experiment with Windows programming. I also remember that during the day, I had to use a really badly-designed data entry program - it was an awful, painful, incredibly user-unfriendly piece of software, the kind that you write not to help people but to punish them. To this very day I'm fueled by the memory of that exceptionally bad software and the effect that it had on those forced to use it.

Anyway, I learned enough HTML to create a bare-bones site for "Dexter," and I still remember the thrill of seeing the site in Mosaic for the first time. Cliché as it may sound, that was a life-altering event for me. Self-publishing - which used to be an expensive, time-consuming process - was now cheap and easy.

Every week I'd post a new cartoon (actually, they weren't really new - they were the same ones I created in college), and the strip gained a decent following. But a few months into it, I started running into problems maintaining the site. Notepad just didn't cut it, and none of the HTML editors I tried did what I needed, so I decided to write an HTML editor that did what I wanted it to.

Now, I'd like to report that I immediately created a useful tool, but the truth is that my first attempt was pretty lame - it was an ugly, slow application that was only a cut above Notepad. But I kept at it, and soon felt confident enough in my programming skills to leave my temp job and seek a full-time programming position. I'll skip the details of the various projects I worked on, but suffice to say, I didn't really enjoy them (think "Dilbert" without the humor). It bugged me how I'd be handed a list of requirements for a specific application, yet I never got to talk with the people who would actually use the finished software - I knew my work didn't meet the needs of the people using it, which bothered the hell out of me. I decided that if I was going to be a career programmer, I should at least like my work, and I should feel that I was spending my time doing something useful.

With that in the background of my thoughts, I started over with my HTML editor project, rewriting it in Delphi to make it faster and more compact. One night, I decided on a whim to make my HTML editor available for download from my comic strip site, and I let a couple of shareware sites know about it before going to sleep. When I awoke the next morning, I was shocked to find that over a thousand people had downloaded it.

The HTML editor, of course, was HomeSite - and it turned out to be far more popular than my comic strips. Almost immediately, HomeSite seemed to be everywhere. I was completely unprepared for the success of HomeSite, and I remember it being an exciting but very sleep-deprived time for me. I had a full-time programming job and a comic strip site to maintain, and suddenly I was receiving a couple hundred emails a day about a program I'd written for myself.

I couldn't work and support HomeSite for free, so I decided to create a for-pay version of HomeSite, hoping I could use it as a way out of my day job. My memory is a little hazy about the numbers, but I think it sold something like 200 copies the first day it went on sale - more than enough to justify quitting my job and jumping head-first into the world of shareware.

But despite being focused on HomeSite full-time, I still found it impossible to handle the amount of email I received. Email just didn't cut it for tech support, so I switched to web-based forums and soon a lively community of HTML coders sprung up. That, to me, was great - unlike my previous programming jobs, people who used my software were providing direct feedback and discussing features that would make their lives easier. Before long I was conducting "feature votes" where new features suggested by customers would be voted on by other forum members, and the results determined what to add to the next version of HomeSite. That experience taught me the importance of involving customers in the evolution of a product, and ever since then I've provided a public forum for those who use of my software.

It was still too much work, though. I was overwhelmed with the demand for HomeSite, and knew I'd need to either hire people or seek acquisition from a company that could support it. I still wanted to code full-time, so I took the latter route. The first suitor was Microsoft, who wanted to acquire HomeSite and have me work on their Visual InterDev project. My visit to Microsoft was a good one - I liked the people I met, and I liked how they worked in small teams despite being a huge company. I also liked Seattle, but my wife's father had become very ill, and we didn't want to move hundreds of miles away from him.

Before I could accept or decline Microsoft's offer, a Dot-Com startup named Allaire Corporation made a counter-offer which would enable me to work from home. I met with Jeremy Allaire, and soon afterwards I accepted their offer. HomeSite was re-branded as an Allaire product, and for the next 18 months I was an Allaire employee.

OK, I just took a breather and I'm now realizing how long this post is - talkative little geek, aren't I? I'd say this is a good place for me to stop, since the rest of the story is fairly recent history which I can write about when I'm older and wiser :)

Comments

[Jon-Paul LeClair]

Great stuff! Keep it coming!

[GJHead]

This is a great story. I remember downloading Homesite years ago and also becoming a paid user. To this day, I still use Homesite as my favorite html editor.

Interesting enough, I'm also a paid user of FeedDemon and TopStyle! Great work, Nick!

[JD]

As a regular reader of your blog, I had little details about your cartooning career but this Born To Code series provides all the details about how we landed with great programs like HomeSite, TopStyle and FeedDemon.

I wonder what would have happened if you had joined Microsoft. One thing I can say for sure is that VS.NET editor would have been much much better! :)

[Arindam Biswas]

Wanna hear more. Go on ...

[stu taylor]

great post nick, intresting to hear you were approached by microsoft that must have been exciting to take that call.
Did they ever appraoch you about feedemon or topstyle?

[Mike]

Nick,

I what did you use to write the first version of HomeSite before you re-wrote it in Delphi?

[Guti]

Cannot wait for part III.
The plans of Macromedia buying Allaire, and the TopStyle born.

[Nick Bradbury]

Mike, the first (unreleased) version of HomeSite was written in Visual Basic.

Stu, a number of companies approached me about both TopStyle and FeedDemon - but Microsoft wasn't among them.

[David Grant]

Every now and then I forget and am reminded that you wrote Homesite (& CFStudio/JRun Studio), which I used for years.

[Peter Tilbrook]

HomeSite did, does, and will always rock! Somehow you should get the right back from Adobe and move it into the 21st century as MM neglected it majorly!

[Aaron Jones]

Great series. I agree with Peter about Homesite, I still use it everyday and dream of a new version written by you. I'd easily pay $250 for a Nick Bradbury written Homesite 6.

Too bad that will *probably* never happen.

Homesite forever, Dreamweaver never ;)

[David Seguin]

Great post, Nick!

'Anyway, I learned enough HTML to create a bare-bones site for "Dexter," and I still remember the thrill of seeing the site in Mosaic for the first time. Cliché as it may sound, that was a life-altering event for me.'

I know that feeling.

[John R. Troy]

I remember the Early Days too.

I remember being happy that there was a good and professional-looking HTML editor, when HotDog (remember them) ended up looking more like a toy.

I remember HS getting a lot of attention.

I remember Nick being very open about bug fixes and help.

I remember Allaire coming and buying HomeSite. (Ah, the CF days, back when I was using that product instead of ASP and I was excited about Allaire and Cold Fusion, which at that time was the best application for writing dynamic web sites, better than ASP and Perl, better documented than PHP).

I remember being a bit disappointed with Macromedia de-emphasizing HomeSite, and IMO de-emphasizing the server technology and the user-friendliness of things like the Forums.

I remember TopStyle being announced and being happy Nick could go his own path.

I also remember being involved with a couple of Zealots. I specifically remember Majorlan Katsma. She originally was a standards guru who was initially very helpful about getting user-friendliness to HomeSite, and I welcomed her controbutions. But she had quite a temper and stubborn zeal that would make Richard Stallman a bit proud, would also bitch about Spam from Allaire, got hired by Allaire/Macromedia and actually denegrated the company and became so zealous about standards, she ended up "hating" Nick's FeedDemon because Nick took into account that some RSS feeds were not well-formed and made sure FD worked with those.

I just hope Nick stays around another 10 years doing cool stuff.

[Nick Bradbury]

John, I'd forgotten all about that particular battle - kind of funny to remember it now given everything that has happened since then! Anyway, thanks for the flashback :)

[John]

Can you elaborate on how you got Microsoft's and Allaire's attention? Did you email them, or hire a PR guy when you were looking to sell homesite?

[Nick Bradbury]

I didn't do anything extra to get Microsoft's or Allaire's attention - as with NewsGator, they actually had the good timing to contact me right after I decided I needed to be acquired :)

[Mladen Mihajlovic]

Hey Nick,

Any place where we can see your games? Maybe even purchase them?

[Matt Sephton]

I "discovered" HomeSite through one of those Shareware sites, around winter of 1995. It was an amazing application and I think the spirit of it lives on in TopStyle.

When I'd go for job interviews, saying that you used HomeSite to code HTML was a definite plus point. It proved that you knew HTML at a code level but were also clever enough to save time doing so by using good software. That's what technology should be about - enabling people to work more intelligently.

[Nick Bradbury]

Mladen, I wish there was some way to play these games, but they were written for an old TRS-80 computer so they wouldn't work with today's PCs.

[Matt Sephton]

Nick, could you not run them under emulation? http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html

[Mun]

Brilliant - can't wait for part III :-)

HomeSite is still my favourite HTML editor, and is the perfect tool for ASP and PHP development.

I'm still using version 5 though. It went a little downhill when Macromedia bought Allaire and merged its functionality into Dreamweaver, which feels quite slow and clunky...

I'm also a FeedDemon user :-)

Keep up the good work Nick!

[Yann]

Hi Nick,

This stories proves that one has to make choices that leads to not-so temporarily situations. I knew all the Homesite story, but didn't realize that your goal was to be a cartoonist. I like Dexter a lot. I wish you all the luck for it to gain the popularity it deserves, and of course to be able to make a decent living out of it !

[blair]

Homesite has always been #1 in my books. I've tryed it all since 1997, that's when i got started in web. The thing I always loved about it is it keeps you sharp with writing code. Dreamweaver is for tourists.

[Magnus]

Nick,
Magnus Rydman from Sweden:
Well, Top Style Pro 4 could be HomeSite 6!! When Macromedia bought Allaire I cried but get very positive about the release of 5.5.
So far so good; But now when Adobe merged Macromedia, what a disgrace for us who love web programming and the skill of hand coding. Adobe would not put a second of development on HS just because they want to sell them monster application's, Dreamweawer and GoLive, :-$
I've worked with HS since 2000 and TSP since 2004. What I really miss is a editable tool bar where you can put your own script and a neat little icon as HS has. I solved that issue with 8 shortcuts for ASP and 15 for PHP.

Best regards, Magnus

[John McAtee]

Thanks, Nick, from another long-time HomeSite user. I picked it up right after Allaire took it over and never looked back. You did good! Very good!!