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For the past 1.5 years I've been working on apps for the agriculture industry, mostly in Australia. This means 2G, slow 3G or satellite using customers are ext
by LAC-Tech 5y ago
For the past 1.5 years I've been working on apps for the agriculture industry, mostly in Australia.
This means 2G, slow 3G or satellite using customers are extremely common. No G too, if they're using your product out in the field. I myself lived 30 minutes drive from a mobile connection in 2021. A sheep literally ate my internet by chewing through the cable from the satellite to the house.
So those users definitely exist in my demographic. And very much in the demographic of my clients, as potential customers.
Still, it seems to be a hard sell to make things work with crap connections or offline. First off, frontend devs resist because you're taking away their favourite toys. (Very rational from their perspective - their next gig is probably in banking or retail or somewhere else with ubiquitous fast internet). Second off, those allocating budgets are very hesitant to spend money on any software dev out of the mainstream. From their perspective software is risky enough given its expense, let alone doing something that might require specialists. (This may be more of an Australian thing, they're not risk takers like Americans).
So yes, you're very right on a technical level. I'm with you, and would love to talk to others who see this. On a more practical level - it's hard to make the stars align, even if it will land you customers.
- agumonkey 5y agoDo you ever write articles / blog entries about this ? I love frugal programming (and it seems there's some people interested in that too). You're experience is pretty telling.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoAppreciate the comment. I do keep meaning to blog. Anything in that post that caught your interest in particular? I'll make it happen.
- stonenoodles 5y agoWould subscribe/read as well. Not original poster, but would be interested in these edge case challenges and solutions.
- fomine3 5y agoAgriculture industry specific user base and limitations, like you wrote.
- nicbou 5y agoIt's interesting to read about people who build things outside the Bay Area scene. It would be interesting to just learn about your job and its challenges.
- agumonkey 5y agoHow do you think/design around the limited bandwidth. The initial payload, the message/ protocol size. The ergonomics too. I assume you try to be straight to the point very often. Basically the idea is how much can we provide with 'only' a 2G link (afaik equivalent to 2 56k modems).
- dalmo3 5y ago> Anything in that post that caught your interest in particular? I'll make it happen. Nothing can ever top the fact you have a cable from a satellite to your house!
- xvector 5y agoAlso, these customers are likely unprofitable to monetize. The cost for a single SWE likely exceeds the incomes of the whole town a few times over.
- netr0ute 5y agoWhat about if it's all unpaid? FOSS is a thing, after all.
- giantrobot 5y ago> Also, these customers are likely unprofitable to monetize. I don't see why you think this would be the case. A friend of mine lives down in Gilroy, CA (south of the San Jose) in a veritable mansion. He and his wife have done very well for themselves. Because they chose land over some SF row house their only internet access is a spotty 4G connection that really acts like a spotty 2G connection much of the time. No ISP is willing to run a landline out where he lives and WISPs aren't much better than the 4G. He's definitely not the only monied person with shitty Internet access. Lost 2G users don't necessarily have 2G (or equivalent) connections all the time. There's plenty of places or times where 4G gets congested and performs terribly even when the end users have high end devices and nominally good connections. A lost sale because someone couldn't complete a form because of poor coverage on the subway is a lost sale. Mobile Internet should never be expected to be some fixed value for any user. Someone with a brand new iPhone on a network with great 5G coverage can still be standing behind a lamppost or something and get 2G levels of network performance. Since an overwhelming percentage of web traffic is from mobile it doesn't make sense to not degrade gracefully in poor network conditions or just minimize resource use.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoThese customers are also businesses, sometimes pretty big ones. A lot of work gets done away from towns. Also Australia is a pretty rich country.
- swiftcoder 5y agoDo you know how many massive mining/logging/oil corporations operate most of their hardware outside of "normal" internet connectivity? There's for sure money in that market (if you can work your way past the environmental/ethical issues)
- wlll 5y ago> A sheep literally ate my internet by chewing through the cable from the satellite to the house. That must have been a pretty long cable!