Where's Your Rubber Ducky App?

I recently attended Orlando Code Camp for the second straight year and I must say that it really topped last year and I cannot wait to see what's in store for next. That's not the point of this post, but a number of sessions I attended there did put some thought in my noggin I thought I'd share.

[![](http://catalog.zune.net/v3.2/en-US/apps/300253c8-94d0-4d89-b1fe-c0f8ac4250cf/primaryImage?width=240&height=240&resize=true)](http://catalog.zune.net/v3.2/en-US/apps/300253c8-94d0-4d89-b1fe-c0f8ac4250cf/primaryImage?width=240&height=240&resize=true)

[Champions League Tracker](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/300253c8-94d0-4d89-b1fe-c0f8ac4250cf)

A new track this year was Windows Phone 7 and one of the talks that really stuck with me was [Jonas Stawski's](http://www.jstawski.com/) "An Inside Look into a Successful Windows Phone App" where he opened up a good portion of his code of his "[Champions League Tracker](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/300253c8-94d0-4d89-b1fe-c0f8ac4250cf)" application and gave fast and pretty thorough walk through of not only the patterns ([MVVM Light](http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/)) and coding decisions he made, but also the short cuts he made in the early stages in order to well; just get it out there. Now he mentioned that there were also some legal issues he muscled through but nonetheless got the app in the marketplace and its doing pretty well.

After some success and feedback, he went back made some changes and submitted updates and has other apps there as well.

The most interesting statement he made during the talk was the answer to this question (paraphrasing)

"How many games do you think the creators of Angry Birds wrote before they hit that one?
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53!
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[![](http://catalog.zune.net/v3.2/en-US/apps/4ad4f1c2-b7db-df11-a844-00237de2db9e/primaryImage?width=240&height=240&resize=true)](http://catalog.zune.net/v3.2/en-US/apps/4ad4f1c2-b7db-df11-a844-00237de2db9e/primaryImage?width=240&height=240&resize=true)

[My Rubber Duck](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/4ad4f1c2-b7db-df11-a844-00237de2db9e)

So that reminded me of a conversation I had with someone at the Tampa WP User Group when he showed me the "[My Rubber Duck](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/4ad4f1c2-b7db-df11-a844-00237de2db9e)". He said to me now this app just works! Yes its simple, but do you have an app in the marketplace, he asks?

The point to this is don't try and write Angry Birds on your first application, find your rubber ducky app. Take that to learn the tool set if you don't know it already, the submission and review process. And of course how kind the the reviews can be "wink".