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It's a good story. From a naive distance (the only perspective I have to offer), coal mining is equal parts romantic and disgusting. We can worry all we want ab

by latch 15y ago

It's a good story. From a naive distance (the only perspective I have to offer), coal mining is equal parts romantic and disgusting. We can worry all we want about sitting at a desk all day long, but our life expectancy has to be considerably better than a coal miners. I do wonder if such stories become less likely (more difficult) over time. Ever watch the movie The Aviator? Average movie, but what struck me in that movie was that you had someone who knew nothing/little about planes, learn to fly, build planes and build an empire on them. Try to do that today. The cost of entry, the licensing, the vastness of knowledge..forget about it. You could probably spend your entire life learning about a single little widget. Software is crossing that same chasm. Simple "i could have done that" ideas aren't as frequent as they used to be (although mobile computing has rejuvenated this many times over). Building software is becoming increasingly complicated. You can't beat facebook without being better than facebook, you can't build source hosting without beating github. You can't build a mobile phone without copy and paste (well...at least, you can't really sell one...).

sliverstorm 15y ago
It's always the new emerging discoveries that are easier to get into. This is why software is crossing the chasm- it is leaving/has left the new emergent status. Bioengineering, purported to be the next wave, seems to be continuing this tradition, though not entirely dirt cheap to enter.
apsurd 15y ago
If everyone believed what you are saying then nothing would get built. It's easy to think creating/inventing things was so much easier back then. Think of how famous I could be if I lived hundreds of years ago. I could easily invent the light bulb, radio, motors, computers. Hell kids today are building these things right! The concepts are so simple, everything was up for grabs back then! Only they weren't. As vain as we want to be the truth is we haven't reached any kind of technological limit. Creating stuff is as hard as it always was. Hard. The facebook thing is a bad one. It's been mentioned time and time again that Zuck could have said the same about myspace... Github also a bad one. They are a TINY. Github is awesome, I love them, but they are TINY. I think ruby and javascript are the most popular languages on github. Yet php is the most popular language on the internet. Point being, github is tiny, HN is tiny, Rails is tiny. Feel good about all the opportunities that exist out there! edited to add: For some motivation, here's what a solo modern inventor can do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen
- latch 15y ago
  Do you really believe that for all fields? Or just for software development? I have to absolutely totally disagree with you if you are talking about all fields. Licensing, regulatory and insurance costs alone prove a significant barrier to entry. I also think that as a field matures, so too does the body of knowledge and the amount of time required to become an expert in said field increases. Look at how much more a doctor, lawyer, or account needs to know today than they did 100 years ago. I also think this is unavoidable in software..though I might agree with you that we aren't there yet? However, whenever I hear someone say "Well, X didn't have those features either when they shipped", I always cringe)
Supermighty 15y ago
Building grand idea software is complicated with a high cost of entry. However the next great thing will come from someone who started off as a static site than added PHP (or whatever), then added more then grew to a grand piece of software. There is a market out there for that little static site, and with stamina that site will grow. You can't do that with aviation. With software, with websites, you don't have to deliver the end product right away. You can grow into the space. Even facebook did that.

by latch 15y ago

sliverstorm 15y ago

It's always the new emerging discoveries that are easier to get into. This is why software is crossing the chasm- it is leaving/has left the new emergent status. Bioengineering, purported to be the next wave, seems to be continuing this tradition, though not entirely dirt cheap to enter.

apsurd 15y ago

If everyone believed what you are saying then nothing would get built. It's easy to think creating/inventing things was so much easier back then. Think of how famous I could be if I lived hundreds of years ago. I could easily invent the light bulb, radio, motors, computers. Hell kids today are building these things right! The concepts are so simple, everything was up for grabs back then! Only they weren't. As vain as we want to be the truth is we haven't reached any kind of technological limit. Creating stuff is as hard as it always was. Hard. The facebook thing is a bad one. It's been mentioned time and time again that Zuck could have said the same about myspace... Github also a bad one. They are a TINY. Github is awesome, I love them, but they are TINY. I think ruby and javascript are the most popular languages on github. Yet php is the most popular language on the internet. Point being, github is tiny, HN is tiny, Rails is tiny. Feel good about all the opportunities that exist out there! edited to add: For some motivation, here's what a solo modern inventor can do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen

latch 15y ago
Do you really believe that for all fields? Or just for software development? I have to absolutely totally disagree with you if you are talking about all fields. Licensing, regulatory and insurance costs alone prove a significant barrier to entry. I also think that as a field matures, so too does the body of knowledge and the amount of time required to become an expert in said field increases. Look at how much more a doctor, lawyer, or account needs to know today than they did 100 years ago. I also think this is unavoidable in software..though I might agree with you that we aren't there yet? However, whenever I hear someone say "Well, X didn't have those features either when they shipped", I always cringe)

Supermighty 15y ago

Building grand idea software is complicated with a high cost of entry. However the next great thing will come from someone who started off as a static site than added PHP (or whatever), then added more then grew to a grand piece of software. There is a market out there for that little static site, and with stamina that site will grow. You can't do that with aviation. With software, with websites, you don't have to deliver the end product right away. You can grow into the space. Even facebook did that.