4 ms·

I disagree with your disagreement in two ways. First (anecdotal, and adjusted to regional variety, but stands to common sense) - all people who I personally kn

I disagree with your disagreement in two ways. First (anecdotal, and adjusted to regional variety, but stands to common sense) - all people who I personally know to have gotten rich off of software were all bar none rich to have access to top of the line hardware/software/services to begin with: 1. accounting software in early 90s (there were literally three or four PCs around in my city there at all. Even software they just cloned locally from some experience they acquired studying abroad in USA) 2. internet/security in mid 90s (guy had T1 while most of us didn't even know internet existed or were dreaming of owning US Robotics modem sometime in the next century) 3. games in late 90s/early 00s (when we all fappped to pictures of VoodooFX and Riva TNT, they had them) 4. web in early 00s (most of us just begged for some limited shared hosting account to even see what it's about) 5. iPhone gold rush (price of iPhone was about my yearly non-disposable income back then) Secondly, and this is part where I partly agree - software development really is one of the more democratized areas - but when field is so approachable that anyone can make money, anyone does. And that means goalpost has shifted to other things - social network, privileged experiences, marketing investment, time allocated to project, being able to fail enough times to succeed, etc.

microcolonel 8y ago
I will say that your anecdote is largely only applicable to obtaining a first-mover advantage on a whole platform, and specifically one which has not become a commodity yet. Today, commodity computers profit software developers the most, and the tools are more available and cheaper than ever before. A person with a second hand Chromebook and some library internet can research, build, test, market, and sell an Android application, if they know to try. It is incomparably easier to become a useful professional software developer than a licensed electrician (provided you're of a sufficiently-suitable mindset), at least where I've been (though, the one time I was flown out to interview at a company in Silicon Valley, I was straight-up told by one of the interviewers that “Here in the valley, we place a high premium on education”, so maybe it's different there and probably some other places). Now, I will say I was very lucky to be able to fail a little bit later, and very lucky to have met somebody in grade school who would basically win me my first full time job while I was still a teenager, I was not in any particular luck when it came to access to computers or really much else.
beams_of_light 8y ago
It'd be really interesting to see the results of an income survey of 30 to 40-somethings with a simple question: Did you have the ability to play Doom in your house?

microcolonel 8y ago

I will say that your anecdote is largely only applicable to obtaining a first-mover advantage on a whole platform, and specifically one which has not become a commodity yet. Today, commodity computers profit software developers the most, and the tools are more available and cheaper than ever before. A person with a second hand Chromebook and some library internet can research, build, test, market, and sell an Android application, if they know to try. It is incomparably easier to become a useful professional software developer than a licensed electrician (provided you're of a sufficiently-suitable mindset), at least where I've been (though, the one time I was flown out to interview at a company in Silicon Valley, I was straight-up told by one of the interviewers that “Here in the valley, we place a high premium on education”, so maybe it's different there and probably some other places). Now, I will say I was very lucky to be able to fail a little bit later, and very lucky to have met somebody in grade school who would basically win me my first full time job while I was still a teenager, I was not in any particular luck when it came to access to computers or really much else.

beams_of_light 8y ago

It'd be really interesting to see the results of an income survey of 30 to 40-somethings with a simple question: Did you have the ability to play Doom in your house?