If a live demo was the first fire, I would be the idiot caveman who kept burning himself. Me Gorg, fire hot. Touch again. Maybe hot not now?
My Mom broke her arm almost seven weeks ago and we've been spending quite a bit of time together. Her recovery is going great and so I decided to show her what I've been working on. It wasn't a real live demo, I convinced myself while I ran the software confidently. I'm just trying to get some feedback from someone I trust, I told myself when I pushed 'run scan' and expected everything to work.
And then, it failed. I shouldn't have been surprised. Live demos and I are like a toddler and wedding plans. But basic incompatibility aside, this was a really embarrassing failure. Not only because it failed so completely, but because I hadn't exposed enough functions for a user to fix it.
The last part is critical and is why I'll keep demoing software to my Mom even though I know it will fail. Whenever I confuse her to such an extent that neither of us can recover, my software has a major flaw.
In this case, the flaw isn't that severe. Windows sleep mode can be an asshole, but I am exposing some functions so that at least users have some control over it. It's maybe 30 hours but holy cow, am I ever glad this didn't get released. And so, while I am deeply afraid of them, I'll keep doing live demos.