It’s been six months since the public release of ecto for Windows (formerly known as TypeWriter for around 4 months).

Here are some interesting statistics of the project as of today.

Lines of Code: 18500+

Not a lot of code really if you consider the amount of functionality the application provided. Though this figure does not include all the third party libraries that I use. Another point to consider (for those of you who doubt the virtue of using C# and the .Net Framework) is that if I were to code this application in “old” languages such as C++/MFC the amount of code will probably double in size if not triple. This is also not to mention the stress of using unmanaged language like C++. I pick this figure out of a hat (really) and have no information or links to back it up but it is based on my experience on working with both languages/frameworks.

Average Development Time Spent per Week: 5 hours/week

This is of course a very rough guess and with all averages, there are ups and downs. Some weeks, such as the weeks immediately after the launch in April and May, I must have spent at least twenty hours a week on ecto while recently I’ve spent as little as two hours per week.

Estimate Hourly Rate based on Licenses Sold: $4.5/hour

For comparisons, minimum wages in New Jersey or New York are both $5.15/hour so you guys are getting a bargain. And who says outsourcing to Asia is cheaper! 🙂 Of course, if my objective is to make a bunch of money I could have done something else completely such as working in the local MikeyD or sell one of my kidney or something. The aim of developing ecto remains the same since day one for me, which is to create something that I can call my own while at the same time provides a tool that let the users get on with composing blog entry and not let the tool gets in their way, and for myself to learn and use technologies that I won’t otherwise use in my day job.

Progress on the next version of ecto has been slow these last couple of weeks. I’ve only worked on the application for couple of hours yesterday after I came back from tennis. It doesn’t help that at work, we were asked to work longer hours in order to meet the project deadline in early November. So for the last week I had been working 11-12 hours shifts for three nights, and will continue until November.

Having said that, this new version is coming along nicely with lots of nice features that would be really difficult to implement in the current release version. I’ve shown early screen shot to a small group of people and the feedback are pretty encouraging so far. Let’s hope that I manage to find more time to work on ecto for the next few weeks.