We enter the Windows phone marketplace: from simple desire to real results

Introduction

If you are an experienced programmer under the .NET platform and you are not interested in ponastalgirovany about the times of formation, as well as find out how, for example, Yandex has a culture of .NET-developers, and you are already registered in the marketplace - this article is not for you. If you are still the same experienced programmer, but are not registered in the marketplace and at the same time consider it robbery to give ten percent of the profits to Softkey, you will be interested in the current registration data at the end of the article in the Registration section. Everyone else: enjoy reading.

A bit of history

All my life I have used the power of dot-net and the development tools provided by Microsoft in my arsenal. I have always been lucky with the requirements for the final product, so I have never been limited in choosing technologies and development tools when, for example, in 2009 I was free to use WPF, although many at that time were still tied to Windows formos. As if in gratitude to my loyalty, the company never let me down in the convenience and functionality of the products (and if I did, I always wrote about bugs, whether it was in dot-net or, for example, at the dawn of the formation of the 2010 studio) I understood in 2005, when I chose between B Sharpe, “pluses” or Java. Running through the then first version of Sharpe, I realized that this is “it’s the most”: wonderful intelligence in the studio, a developed “all-in-one” framework, the absence of unnecessary pointers, as well as wonderful books by Apress (I think many were starting to learn sy from books by Andrew Troelsen) - the only publisher whose books were put together as it should, ranging from choosing a font to a page layout (perhaps for some it’s funny, but even how the books looked played a huge role for me in choosing a language ; apparently because in my heart I am as a designer, I love and study that “designer” world: from typesetting, fonts and typography in general to the rules of composition and photoshop stunts).

I am very lazy by my nature (only willpower, which can shut this laziness deeper, and saved my whole life, making me a rather successful software architect), so I looked for software that would immediately give me the result (at least, minimized). implementation time; T-SQL was ideal in this regard, being declarative to the “bone marrow”, a la write what needs to be done, not how to do it). Therefore, it’s impossible to convey in words how I, at one time, was impressed by the same Windows version with the corresponding visual editor as compared to the same “pluses”, where everything had to be written with “handles”. Therefore, the same "plus" immediately went to the forest, without going beyond the institute program. I understood that I like to solve real problems that are unlikely to be critical in some hundreds of milliseconds. And that is why I chose Dot No, which over the years continued to delight me with a declarative link, WCF, WF and, of course, WPF.
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But in the spring of 2010, in the midst of one of their projects, which was simultaneously conducted under both a pc and a poppy, I was increasingly being visited by the thought that it was time to start learning how to do this. I saw the scale of distribution, convenience and ease of epp-stor, the beauty of ah-oh-es (although I couldn’t fall in love with the desktop version for years, having a macbook at home, which is successfully updated up to the last "lion", in parallel with the Windows device - The “Seven” for me with honor withstood the onslaught of years of resistance, and with all that it withstood all ten). I saw the future in tablets, I did not see any success with Microsoft, which seemed to be stuck in its only desktop development and so shamefully slit the Windows mobile to the level of dinosaurs. Therefore, I quite reasonably thought that in five years I could be left with nothing (read: without a well-paid job), if I don’t sit down for obijective si.

I liked the WPF paradigm itself; I immediately fell in love with MVVM with all the fibers. Later I didn’t understand people spitting on silverlight. I was ashamed of the developers making brake applications going to the masses (as well as, for example, ashamed of the poor typography in advertising all over the city). For those developers who did not read the documentation and, for example, easily taking the processor to 80 percent load, only because the standard shader shadow was added to the root parent (which led to the mandatory redrawing of the entire tree, with, for example, a flashing cursor in one textbox ), instead of adding this shadow to an element that does not contain any “children” (it visually looked the same, but in this case only one text box was redrawn when the cursor was flashing, and not the whole tree). All this lightness and the principle of out-of-the-box in dot-nete could not (and could not) divert me to serious study, for example, web development (well, isn’t it funny: you make a website, but it looks different browsers in different ways; you remember about my laziness - so how can I get to do the same thing five times - I hope for some common standard with normal tools and a single behavior) or towards the same obdzhektiv si - comparing the tools and languages ​​it seems that the visual studio and the dot-no in its present form made “E PPL ”, not Microsoft.

Therefore, you understand my feelings about the release of last year's new platform. After a week of reading manuals, I wrote my simple application, tried all aspects of the proposed mobile chips (useless for the end user, but gives a lot to learn platform pitfalls), learning about certain limitations (as a banal example: sin (90 °) is not was equal to 1). Last fall, I offered Yandex to write an application for electric trains for free (at that time I often visited Zelenograd and therefore I felt a special need in such an application, although I had an iPhone), but Yandex didn’t want to open the API (what’s called, and now there, as well as the presence, more precisely, the absence of the application). I even went in January, when they opened a vacancy, for an interview, during which, according to completely transparent revelations of the interviewer, I realized that the company doesn’t have Dot-Net culture at all, and that the company hopes that Microsoft, However, it will open access to the native code. After realizing this fact, the course of the following questions at the interview became obvious - since we couldn’t talk about the code (and all the technological chips implemented in past projects could not be appreciated), we, of course, talked about sorting algorithms, their complexity and other things "on paper". I have immense respect for people who know all these things (although, honestly, I have never met such people among tens of thousands of people, selecting developers to join my teams for various projects), but it was not all about me. If I need a fast search algorithm on a tree, I will ask Google, choosing the best of several ready-made options. If I need to assess their complexity, I will simply take and write a spike (as my longtime Denver colleagues called a simplified prototype model), which in figures clearly tells about performance and speed (which I did a couple of years ago by participating in the development of the system core for American media giant Starz, choosing different ORMs, stopping at the end not on either Hibernate or Entity framework, and on Russians DataObjects.NET). The main quality in a programmer for me has always been the belief that a person can find the right answer (after all, the pumped brain itself gives solutions, you don’t even need to tense up - the main thing is to formulate the task accurately), solve any problem as soon as possible (maybe because The software was not critical in terms of performance within milliseconds, although I always honed my decisions on the profiler and at the same time is a perfectionist, but not fanatical. Well, and again, the statement during the interview that the company (“Yandex”) itself grows personnel, always starting from a simple developer (regardless of past experience), I did not like, because the perspective of the next two years (this is so much , according to the interviewer, it took him to get into a team lead) in the status of a regular developer (with an appropriate salary) I was not tempted. So with “Yandex” did not grow together. Although they still scored people, judging by some, but “Yandex.Probka”.

After September of this year, I went into one big project heading product development in one small private company that is used by many companies throughout the CIS (as one of the official examples, so as not to violate other non-disclosure agreements with huge corporations, and with small Russian branches of foreign companies, - some degree in the selection of volunteers in "Sochi - 2014", the benefit of the memorandum of understanding was concluded recently and officially is in press releases, - only there with a throughput of hundreds of you a person) and only in September appeared at least one hour a day without prejudice to his personal life (no need to say that before that I often spent more than 8 hours at work). And this coincided with the fact that Microsoft entered the Russian market, and I understood that this was a sign (all the more, I was tempted to think that you would receive all the income alone, and not some uncle who would pay you a fixed salary, collecting all the cream).

Prerequisites

Do you know silverlight and have some free time? Do you have any idea how to make the world better? Congratulations: this is enough to start creating an application for the Windows 7 platform today and receive a reward for your efforts in monetary terms. It may sound trite, but it really is.

check in

Even at the time of the online broadcast of the Russian event this fall with the Softkey ad and an enticing offer to take all the hassle of communication with the American and Russian tax on myself just for the “modest” 10% of profits, I realized that a lazy people who do not want to understand are going to breed is not childish. But we are smart people and do not like to give alms to people who do not need it, is not it?
Therefore, I will tell you how to register and provide yourself with the opportunity to withdraw money, talking about some of the pitfalls.

Create an account

Create an account on create.msdn.com . Tip number one: create a separate windows live account for this, having decided in advance on the official “name” of yourself as an application publisher, etc. Microsoft is still not able to transfer data from one account to another (therefore, for example, if you are a company, create windows live-account for yourself, and don’t use any of its developer’s - after all, he can always leave the company). It is also impossible to change the type of account from student to individual over time (update: comments said that a year after the last activation in DreamSpark and in the profile on AppHub, the system will ask you to either confirm your student status again or purchase a subscription; however, a year this is a lot, isn’t it?), therefore, if you are a student of the last year, it’s better to create an individual one immediately, paying for annual maintenance just before the release (and to unlock the device and test the application on it, creating a temporary free student).

Get EIN

You must receive an EIN in the American tax (for simplicity, you can associate with our tax ID). Because the US tax, then, as in Russia, you do not need to personally go to the place of residence (even if it’s over 1000 km), fill in a bunch of papers, wait in line for + 2 weeks to receive - one thing is enough, albeit long, but just a skype call. What needs to be done is beautifully described in this Habr article. I will make only a few of my corrections and additions:

• you need to call this number: +1 267 941-10-99, and not what is specified in the article, from three days to eight in the morning Moscow time;
• I recommend to send the form during a conversation by fax, and not to dictate by letter (there are a lot of online services that give a free hand to send several pages - what you need, because there is only one page in the form). One “but” that I ran into: if you send by fax, then your signature should be: therefore, before calling via Skype, sign with a pen, then scan / take photos in normal quality for recognition;
• their fax number: +1 267 941-10-30;
• Be prepared (morally and financially with Skype balance) to hang on the phone for one and a half hours (while calling the free operator + talking and checking the data yourself);
• don't be afraid, the very minimum english is enough;
• at the very end, the girl (in my case, the girl’s voice resembled the hostess of Tom from “Tom and Jerry”, without removing the smile from my face) several times dictates your EIN to you, which you can use immediately. About a month later you will receive a letter from the states of a physical document with confirmation, the back of which will need to be sent back (if necessary, a real handshake in real life).

We get the form W-8

Having received an EIN, you send the W-8BEN form to Microsoft (it’s not just for Americans to understand that you are a foreign citizen, therefore you don’t need to take 30% of their taxes). How to do this is perfectly described there , only the address to send is different:
Windows Marketplace for Mobile
Attn: Finance Department
29011 Commerce Center Drive
Valencia, CA 91355
USA

It is also worth noting the fact that at one time a few nerves spoiled me: “Microsoft” in your profile will write that I did not receive a W-8 form from you - this is normal (by the way, now, it seems, they don’t write - apparently got caliper); the form will immediately “be found” as soon as Microsoft is ready to send you the first amount of money (that is, when your profit passes the minimum payout threshold). The main thing is to send a letter with tracking to them in order to be sure that the “Mail of Russia” will not lose it.

PI

If you are not IP, do not rush them to become. If you have a small profit, it is much more convenient to simply receive money on your regular card and pay taxes once a year (there is nothing difficult in this).
Being an IE with simplified taxation is beneficial only when you are already unwound, receiving a steady income. So that you understand why, I will tell you: among other things, you will have to open a separate legal bank account, and the bank, just for what you have, will take on average 4,000 p. per month (update: judging by the comments, there are still banks that are not healed - google; for example: “I am charged 490 rubles a month, I have a current account and a currency account (plus a transit account for it, of course), plus Internet banking” ). Also, having the status of an IP is also not free: you will constantly have to pay the minimum minimum wage (more precisely taxes from it), etc., as in the well-known video clip : “+ shipping + taxes + beer”. So, as soon as the profit will be, for example, more than 100 000 per year, then it is already possible to be confused, in the sense that it will be profitable for IP, despite some inconveniences.

Conclusion

As you can see, nothing complicated: call once, send two letters once, pay for a one-year subscription, absolutely no hemorrhoids with taxes, if you aren’t IE (although in this case the devil is not so bad as he is painted) and you don’t have to pay for life 10% of some third company.

Cons platform in ordinary life

As a bonus for those who do not yet have Windows Phone.

• there is no possibility to immediately select several photos and delete them with one button (you have to either connect to your computer or delete them on the phone one by one);
• It is not yet possible to select and delete several SMS at once (it is necessary to delete one at a time, or all correspondence with a contact at once). However, it should be understood that the same ah-oh-es suffered the same one and a half years ago - everything will be;
• The phone does not support synchronization of multiple Google calendars. More precisely, this chip was added to the mango and it can also be enabled for Google by some shamanism (as a guide for searching: you need to shamanize with a desktop computer, disable javascript in the browser, change the user agent to ios, manually put daws on the phone calendars on the site Google and re-create account on the phone - calendars will appear). True, even in this case, they say, it is better not to add entries on the phone - otherwise there will be duplicates in the calendar (I did not check it myself, I use the calendar on the ipad);
• the guys from “Microsoft” write about typography in full, but in the telephone keypad, unlike the iPhone, there is only a hyphen (there is neither a dash "-", nor n-dash "-"); letters (tracking, as well as leading, appeared only in the 5th saverboard and then only under the desktop), although they themselves force them to use the guidelines, not realizing that stuck HELLO (and even more, something twice as long) - it is not readable (hello to the Ministry of Health and Social Security) and not at all cool in contrast
  from "HELLO" (of course, using half the space);
• I have a Lumia 800 (the only real device on WP7 that I wanted to buy, and I kept both Mozart, and radar, and other fraternities) and the camera seemed to be a complete shit compared to the same fourth iPhone (to which I, by the way, go back I do not want: iped + lumia - they live beautifully together, charging every two days), until I understood the trick in setting the “night” mode when shooting indoors. But still, autofocus sometimes walks still + furious, that tap-to-focus immediately takes a shot (although I may not like it, and then it’s humanly impossible to remove this bunch of bad photos - see the first paragraph) . Yes, the idea is good, but only if the camera worked perfectly. It is also surprising that when you make a frame, the colors and brightness often at the last second change in some unimaginable direction from what is shown on the screen. In other words, the hint is that if there is a possibility, it is better to take the Sony NEX-7 with you.
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