6 ms·

We often get users estimating that a Pernosco session saves them half an hour or more. Let's say on average it saves 15 minutes. Let's say a reasonable develope

by roca 6y ago

We often get users estimating that a Pernosco session saves them half an hour or more. Let's say on average it saves 15 minutes. Let's say a reasonable developer's time is worth at least 50 USD an hour. Then Pernosco is giving 12.5 USD of value and we're charging 4 USD. Is that insane?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
detaro 6y ago
To me it feels like it's a weird scale. 5 a month is something where I actually have to think when and how to use it, and that's not something I want to do for a tool like that. I assume it's still usable as a local rr-GUI (that hopefully adds something) without submitting? I get that you are still looking for a model, but I would much more expect something like "my employer pays $X00 or $X000 and we get a volume where I don't have to think about using up a scarce resource" (potentially even can have customer systems run it if there's issues) - the market for single licenses feels pretty small to me? EDIT: cleaned up word salad
- roca 6y ago
  > I assume it's still usable as a local rr-GUI (that hopefully adds something) without submitting? No. > I get that you are still looking for a model, but I would much more expect something like "my employer pays $X00 or $X000 and we don't get a volume where I don't have to think about using up a scarce resource" - the market for single licenses feels pretty small to me? We like that model too but it's been hard to sell that. We're certainly happy to offer such a deal if someone asks for it! People in related businesses have said they've had more success with "bottom-up" individual-developer sales than with enterprisey deals, at least initially, so we are giving it a go.
  - detaro 6y ago
    I guess that makes sense regarding slowly getting a foot in the door and leaving enterprise to "let's talk about it". I don't think it's for me, but I'll try it out and either way good luck, I hope it works out for you!
- roca 6y ago
  To help with this we've added a new "volume subscription plan" for individual users: 50 submissions per month for $50.
antonzabirko 6y ago
It looks cool but i dont adopt platform services in general. Seems like a profitable business if that port doesnt scare devs away.
trevyn 6y ago
>Is that insane? I have no idea, but I’ve already lost interest.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  Same. Punishing tool usage is a really dumb mistake. You want your tool to be used all the time and become indispensable, so you can charge a high monthly fee for it. Corporations are used to and even expect fixed monthly fees. Pernosco doesn't at all understand how large firms work, and what it takes to get a budget for developer productivity tools.
  - sfink 6y ago
    I suggest you consider giving them a little benefit of the doubt? I agree with you that for a larger corporation it makes much more sense for the tool to be prepaid and for the developers to not worry about their usage. There's definitely a learning curve to switching to a new style of debugging, even if you're accustomed to rr, and so encouraging use is more likely to get people to actually get to the point where they're benefiting from the tool. But that's a tough sales cycle, they've tried it, they've said they would be happy if someone came asking for that. You could make the argument that they should hire an enterprise sales person or something, which may be true but also has obvious costs. (Let's just say that it would be a large percentage increase over their current staffing.) I'd think that their reality wins out over your "shoulds". You may be right that they're incompetent about selling into the enterprise, but I'm certain that they've had more experience trying to sell Pernosco to larger corporations than you have and so I'm not going to ding them for this additional purchasing opportunity. Source: I work for a mid-sized company that does have a contract that gives me unlimited access to Pernosco. It's quite useful. I don't know the exact terms. I know I have solved some bugs that I would have been unlikely to ever fix and would be ongoing stability and maintenance concerns. I'm working on a bug right now where the submitter is able to reproduce easily but I am not. They have managed to capture it in an rr recording, so I'm uploading it to Pernosco to take a look even though my desktop's CPU is mismatched enough that I can't just run the recording myself. From past experience, if I have it in Pernosco, I will be able to fix it, even though the root cause is far far removed from the resulting crash. (It's subtle GC corruption.)
adamnemecek 6y ago
OK my workflow might be run, debug, change code, recompile, run, debug... Like many many times over. I can't imagine having to pay every time I use the debugger. Like it's weird that you pay per submission.
- roca 6y ago
  Yeah, Pernosco may not be a great fit when you have to do that. That's not just due to the pricing model --- which we can change! --- but the entire debugging approach, where we do a lot of analysis up front, speeding the debugging experience but adding latency to the workflow. Now, sometimes people are doing that because to track down a bug they have to go through many cycles of adding instrumentation or logging to their code. In many cases Pernosco can just make those cycles go away, e.g. using https://pernos.co/about/expressions https://pernos.co/about/expressions. However, if you develop new code using cycles of "add new code, compile, debug", and each of those debugging sessions are short, Pernosco isn't a great fit for that currently.
JustFinishedBSG 6y ago
Do you realize how insane things would be if everything was charged as a percentage of value provided ? So you charge, 1/4 of the value given. Should my IDE charge me 1/4 too? My ISP ? My computer OEM ? My electricity provider ? My renter ? My OS ? That's a lot of 1/4th.
shawnz 6y ago
Are you saying that the average session saves the developer 15 minutes, or the average successful session, in which the bug is actually solved, saves 15 minutes? How likely is it that a given bug will be solved with Pernosco? What do I do if I pay and only realize after that the session wasn't helpful?
- roca 6y ago
  The average session. Of course it's impossible to know the actual average number for any given developer but we often get developers estimating Pernosco saved hours, occasionally days, or occasionally the bug couldn't have been solved any other way. So I just tried to make a conservative guess. > How likely is it that a given bug will be solved with Pernosco? There's no way to put a number on this but I think it's unusual to not eventually figure it out with rr or Pernosco (but Pernosco will be faster) if conditions under the user's control are met: the recording really captures the bug you care about, it's in code in a language we support, and the debuginfo and sources are right. > What do I do if I pay and only realize after that the session wasn't helpful? "Sorry". Hopefully the reasons it wasn't helpful are mostly under your control and the benefits average out in your favour.

by roca 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

detaro 6y ago

To me it feels like it's a weird scale. 5 a month is something where I actually have to think when and how to use it, and that's not something I want to do for a tool like that. I assume it's still usable as a local rr-GUI (that hopefully adds something) without submitting? I get that you are still looking for a model, but I would much more expect something like "my employer pays $X00 or $X000 and we get a volume where I don't have to think about using up a scarce resource" (potentially even can have customer systems run it if there's issues) - the market for single licenses feels pretty small to me? EDIT: cleaned up word salad

roca 6y ago
> I assume it's still usable as a local rr-GUI (that hopefully adds something) without submitting? No. > I get that you are still looking for a model, but I would much more expect something like "my employer pays $X00 or $X000 and we don't get a volume where I don't have to think about using up a scarce resource" - the market for single licenses feels pretty small to me? We like that model too but it's been hard to sell that. We're certainly happy to offer such a deal if someone asks for it! People in related businesses have said they've had more success with "bottom-up" individual-developer sales than with enterprisey deals, at least initially, so we are giving it a go.
- detaro 6y ago
  I guess that makes sense regarding slowly getting a foot in the door and leaving enterprise to "let's talk about it". I don't think it's for me, but I'll try it out and either way good luck, I hope it works out for you!
roca 6y ago
To help with this we've added a new "volume subscription plan" for individual users: 50 submissions per month for $50.

antonzabirko 6y ago

It looks cool but i dont adopt platform services in general. Seems like a profitable business if that port doesnt scare devs away.

trevyn 6y ago

>Is that insane? I have no idea, but I’ve already lost interest.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
Same. Punishing tool usage is a really dumb mistake. You want your tool to be used all the time and become indispensable, so you can charge a high monthly fee for it. Corporations are used to and even expect fixed monthly fees. Pernosco doesn't at all understand how large firms work, and what it takes to get a budget for developer productivity tools.
- sfink 6y ago
  I suggest you consider giving them a little benefit of the doubt? I agree with you that for a larger corporation it makes much more sense for the tool to be prepaid and for the developers to not worry about their usage. There's definitely a learning curve to switching to a new style of debugging, even if you're accustomed to rr, and so encouraging use is more likely to get people to actually get to the point where they're benefiting from the tool. But that's a tough sales cycle, they've tried it, they've said they would be happy if someone came asking for that. You could make the argument that they should hire an enterprise sales person or something, which may be true but also has obvious costs. (Let's just say that it would be a large percentage increase over their current staffing.) I'd think that their reality wins out over your "shoulds". You may be right that they're incompetent about selling into the enterprise, but I'm certain that they've had more experience trying to sell Pernosco to larger corporations than you have and so I'm not going to ding them for this additional purchasing opportunity. Source: I work for a mid-sized company that does have a contract that gives me unlimited access to Pernosco. It's quite useful. I don't know the exact terms. I know I have solved some bugs that I would have been unlikely to ever fix and would be ongoing stability and maintenance concerns. I'm working on a bug right now where the submitter is able to reproduce easily but I am not. They have managed to capture it in an rr recording, so I'm uploading it to Pernosco to take a look even though my desktop's CPU is mismatched enough that I can't just run the recording myself. From past experience, if I have it in Pernosco, I will be able to fix it, even though the root cause is far far removed from the resulting crash. (It's subtle GC corruption.)

adamnemecek 6y ago

OK my workflow might be run, debug, change code, recompile, run, debug... Like many many times over. I can't imagine having to pay every time I use the debugger. Like it's weird that you pay per submission.

roca 6y ago
Yeah, Pernosco may not be a great fit when you have to do that. That's not just due to the pricing model --- which we can change! --- but the entire debugging approach, where we do a lot of analysis up front, speeding the debugging experience but adding latency to the workflow. Now, sometimes people are doing that because to track down a bug they have to go through many cycles of adding instrumentation or logging to their code. In many cases Pernosco can just make those cycles go away, e.g. using https://pernos.co/about/expressions https://pernos.co/about/expressions. However, if you develop new code using cycles of "add new code, compile, debug", and each of those debugging sessions are short, Pernosco isn't a great fit for that currently.

JustFinishedBSG 6y ago

Do you realize how insane things would be if everything was charged as a percentage of value provided ? So you charge, 1/4 of the value given. Should my IDE charge me 1/4 too? My ISP ? My computer OEM ? My electricity provider ? My renter ? My OS ? That's a lot of 1/4th.

shawnz 6y ago

Are you saying that the average session saves the developer 15 minutes, or the average successful session, in which the bug is actually solved, saves 15 minutes? How likely is it that a given bug will be solved with Pernosco? What do I do if I pay and only realize after that the session wasn't helpful?

roca 6y ago
The average session. Of course it's impossible to know the actual average number for any given developer but we often get developers estimating Pernosco saved hours, occasionally days, or occasionally the bug couldn't have been solved any other way. So I just tried to make a conservative guess. > How likely is it that a given bug will be solved with Pernosco? There's no way to put a number on this but I think it's unusual to not eventually figure it out with rr or Pernosco (but Pernosco will be faster) if conditions under the user's control are met: the recording really captures the bug you care about, it's in code in a language we support, and the debuginfo and sources are right. > What do I do if I pay and only realize after that the session wasn't helpful? "Sorry". Hopefully the reasons it wasn't helpful are mostly under your control and the benefits average out in your favour.