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I’ve often thought of the idea of a “town programmer” that could solve problems for businesses/people in the town. It feels like the biggest problem with that i

I’ve often thought of the idea of a “town programmer” that could solve problems for businesses/people in the town. It feels like the biggest problem with that is people don’t know what a generalist programmer can do. I think just setting up Shopify instances and inventory/online ordering systems would be a good use case.

sethhochberg 6y ago
This kind of work is what keeps most of the small, local marketing agencies you've never heard of afloat. The town programmer, town UI designer, etc all generally work at a place like that with the town's small-business salesperson. They'll ususaly do anything from helping you claim/manage your Google Maps listing to publishing your restaurant's menu online to creating your Shopify store or Wordpress marketing site, alongside your print media or whatever other needs.
- colonelxc 6y ago
  Yes. I interned at a local ISP (DSL provider on AT&T lines), but most of their business was essentially just this type of stuff. Building simple static websites, running some software package for a business (doing the admin+hosting work), and fixing/configuring computers and such at the local businesses. Businesses like this are really flexible, and seek to serve their local customers with whatever IT needs they have.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The problem is that writing code is a much smaller percentage of most business problems than those of us with software backgrounds assume. In your example, setting up a Shopify instance isn't much of a programming task, but consider the ongoing support. Once the instance is up, who updates the listings? Makes changes? Who's on call for support? Eventually you're just running a services business to cater to customers who don't want to get their hands dirty. Even for problems that can be solved by writing a lot of code, the overhead of dealing with sales, payments, hosting, licensing, ongoing support, and maintenance can easily overshadow the effort required to write the original code. In general, it's hard to write software solutions that can be handed off to customers without ongoing support. This model might work for people who can dive into old codebases and fix things, but that's miserable work as soon as you see what real-world code looks like at companies without permanent developers.

sethhochberg 6y ago

This kind of work is what keeps most of the small, local marketing agencies you've never heard of afloat. The town programmer, town UI designer, etc all generally work at a place like that with the town's small-business salesperson. They'll ususaly do anything from helping you claim/manage your Google Maps listing to publishing your restaurant's menu online to creating your Shopify store or Wordpress marketing site, alongside your print media or whatever other needs.

colonelxc 6y ago
Yes. I interned at a local ISP (DSL provider on AT&T lines), but most of their business was essentially just this type of stuff. Building simple static websites, running some software package for a business (doing the admin+hosting work), and fixing/configuring computers and such at the local businesses. Businesses like this are really flexible, and seek to serve their local customers with whatever IT needs they have.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

The problem is that writing code is a much smaller percentage of most business problems than those of us with software backgrounds assume. In your example, setting up a Shopify instance isn't much of a programming task, but consider the ongoing support. Once the instance is up, who updates the listings? Makes changes? Who's on call for support? Eventually you're just running a services business to cater to customers who don't want to get their hands dirty. Even for problems that can be solved by writing a lot of code, the overhead of dealing with sales, payments, hosting, licensing, ongoing support, and maintenance can easily overshadow the effort required to write the original code. In general, it's hard to write software solutions that can be handed off to customers without ongoing support. This model might work for people who can dive into old codebases and fix things, but that's miserable work as soon as you see what real-world code looks like at companies without permanent developers.