5 ms·

I had to laugh at the opening: "The tools are largely free", except the bare minimum to develop for ios is a mac and the apple developer account (if you ever ex

by flax 5y ago

I had to laugh at the opening: "The tools are largely free", except the bare minimum to develop for ios is a mac and the apple developer account (if you ever expect to publish your app). And a significant subset of functionality only works on physical devices and not emulators. If you don't already have the mac and iphone, you're looking at $600 for a used macbook air, ~$300 for a used 2 generations old iphone, and $100 for the dev account. $1000 is not "largely free".

sitzkrieg 5y ago
came to post this, what a joke. are they steeped in privilege or what?! maybe simply unaware of the alternative ecosystem costs
- vmception 5y ago
  its not just about javascript and android, take a look at FPGA development... several multi thousand dollar licenses out the wazoo
  - StillBored 5y ago
    well professionally (and its likely a lot more than that), but in the hobby market there are a lot of low end devices with free or zero cost tools. The iCE40 boards are sub $20 (iCESugar nano) and have an open source toolchains. And things like the ECP5(G) boards are large enough to host full RISC-V/etc environments for less than $50. So, yah, FPGA's can get outrageously expensive, but there are a lot of low end devices with a lot of capabilities (those ECP5's have highspeed serdes, which can act as PCIe cards for example).
  - sitzkrieg 5y ago
    yea i was gunna post a high end JTAG as example, but for mobile development, sheesh android is actually virtually free
ctdonath 5y ago
You need a computer to compile at all. If you’re doing iOS you probably already have an iPhone. Old physical phones (cheap) are fine for dev, can simulate latest. $100/yr only needed if you’re actually charging for the app - which should earn you those costs pretty soon. Yes, $1000 baseline for what you likely already have most of. The “largely free” is in contrast with platforms having >$25,000/yr entry costs just for a license.
- flax 5y ago
  Except that it's actually in direct contrast with Android development, where the tools are available, for actually free, for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And the developer account is a one time $25. My personal situation: I wanted to add an iOS client for the game I've been developing in Flutter. I did not have a mac or an iphone already. Fortunately, I've been able to borrow them for builds and occasional testing. But, that's obviously not optimal, and there's zero good reason that Apple couldn't provide their build tools for other platforms. Instead, they leverage their monopoly on the app store to force hardware sales to developers.
  - spiderice 5y ago
    > and there's zero good reason that Apple couldn't provide their build tools for other platforms How do you figure? Then Apple would have to maintain their build tools for other platforms. Waste of resources for something that ultimately isn't going to make Apple money. It's no different than Microsoft intentionally gimping Excel on Mac. I've never seen anyone complain that they have to own a Windows computer to develop Windows apps. Or a Playstation to develop Playstation games. I'm not sure why Apple is such an exception in your eyes.
    - nyanpasu64 5y ago
      > Then Apple would have to maintain their build tools for other platforms. Waste of resources for something that ultimately isn't going to make Apple money. It makes sense on Apple's part, but I still dislike it. > I've never seen anyone complain that they have to own a Windows computer to develop Windows apps. Windows can be installed on any computer, whereas macOS requires purchasing Mac hardware. Additionally you can cross-compile Windows apps on Linux (and possibly Mac) using MinGW toolchains (or with great difficulty, MSVC on Wine).
Aaargh20318 5y ago
> $1000 is not "largely free". It is absolutely insignificant compared to the cost of developing software. It’s a tool needed to do a job. Go talk to a carpenter, a builder or a mechanic and ask them how much they spent on tools. Then compare their hourly rates to that of a software engineer.
- wmf 5y ago
  In the developed world I presume.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > Then compare their hourly rates to that of a software engineer. They are equivalent if not more, where I am.
- chlorion 5y ago
  What cost(s) are you referring to? I can develop software comfortably on a $100 laptop and whatever choice of FOSS operating system. You can get a workable but less comfortable setup with an inexpensive device like the raspberry pi or a used system. That is part of what makes CS special compared to other fields, the tools and information are available to everyone who has a working computer and internet access instead of being extremely expensive and locked behind gatekeepers like colleges. Also keep in mind that the free tools and operating systems are not "junky" or whatever you might assume if you aren't familiar with them. GCC and LLVM are examples of extremely high quality FOSS toolchains, Debian and FreeBSD for operating systems.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
GeekyBear 5y ago
How quickly we forget what development costs looked like in the recent past >PlayStation developers need to cough up £ 12,000 for the full system (which Sony is adamant it doesn’t make money on), although all subsequent software tools and hardware upgrades are free. https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit Not to mention other obscene costs that were common, like charging developers to issue a patch for software sold online. >Double Fine's Tim Schaefer pegged the cost of submitting an Xbox 360 patch at $40,000 https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under-fire-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under...
- wmf 5y ago
  I don't know if that's a great comparison since only 7,918 PlayStation games were ever released while computers and phones have literally millions.
paxys 5y ago
Just reading the replies to this thread it's unbelievable how out of touch people are with how software development happens in most of the world. I can guarantee that there are many companies in India where the entire engineering department has less than $1000 worth of hardware combined.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by flax 5y ago

sitzkrieg 5y ago

came to post this, what a joke. are they steeped in privilege or what?! maybe simply unaware of the alternative ecosystem costs

vmception 5y ago
its not just about javascript and android, take a look at FPGA development... several multi thousand dollar licenses out the wazoo
- StillBored 5y ago
  well professionally (and its likely a lot more than that), but in the hobby market there are a lot of low end devices with free or zero cost tools. The iCE40 boards are sub $20 (iCESugar nano) and have an open source toolchains. And things like the ECP5(G) boards are large enough to host full RISC-V/etc environments for less than $50. So, yah, FPGA's can get outrageously expensive, but there are a lot of low end devices with a lot of capabilities (those ECP5's have highspeed serdes, which can act as PCIe cards for example).
- sitzkrieg 5y ago
  yea i was gunna post a high end JTAG as example, but for mobile development, sheesh android is actually virtually free

ctdonath 5y ago

You need a computer to compile at all. If you’re doing iOS you probably already have an iPhone. Old physical phones (cheap) are fine for dev, can simulate latest. $100/yr only needed if you’re actually charging for the app - which should earn you those costs pretty soon. Yes, $1000 baseline for what you likely already have most of. The “largely free” is in contrast with platforms having >$25,000/yr entry costs just for a license.

flax 5y ago
Except that it's actually in direct contrast with Android development, where the tools are available, for actually free, for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And the developer account is a one time $25. My personal situation: I wanted to add an iOS client for the game I've been developing in Flutter. I did not have a mac or an iphone already. Fortunately, I've been able to borrow them for builds and occasional testing. But, that's obviously not optimal, and there's zero good reason that Apple couldn't provide their build tools for other platforms. Instead, they leverage their monopoly on the app store to force hardware sales to developers.
- spiderice 5y ago
  > and there's zero good reason that Apple couldn't provide their build tools for other platforms How do you figure? Then Apple would have to maintain their build tools for other platforms. Waste of resources for something that ultimately isn't going to make Apple money. It's no different than Microsoft intentionally gimping Excel on Mac. I've never seen anyone complain that they have to own a Windows computer to develop Windows apps. Or a Playstation to develop Playstation games. I'm not sure why Apple is such an exception in your eyes.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    > Then Apple would have to maintain their build tools for other platforms. Waste of resources for something that ultimately isn't going to make Apple money. It makes sense on Apple's part, but I still dislike it. > I've never seen anyone complain that they have to own a Windows computer to develop Windows apps. Windows can be installed on any computer, whereas macOS requires purchasing Mac hardware. Additionally you can cross-compile Windows apps on Linux (and possibly Mac) using MinGW toolchains (or with great difficulty, MSVC on Wine).

Aaargh20318 5y ago

> $1000 is not "largely free". It is absolutely insignificant compared to the cost of developing software. It’s a tool needed to do a job. Go talk to a carpenter, a builder or a mechanic and ask them how much they spent on tools. Then compare their hourly rates to that of a software engineer.

wmf 5y ago
In the developed world I presume.
throwawayboise 5y ago
> Then compare their hourly rates to that of a software engineer. They are equivalent if not more, where I am.
chlorion 5y ago
What cost(s) are you referring to? I can develop software comfortably on a $100 laptop and whatever choice of FOSS operating system. You can get a workable but less comfortable setup with an inexpensive device like the raspberry pi or a used system. That is part of what makes CS special compared to other fields, the tools and information are available to everyone who has a working computer and internet access instead of being extremely expensive and locked behind gatekeepers like colleges. Also keep in mind that the free tools and operating systems are not "junky" or whatever you might assume if you aren't familiar with them. GCC and LLVM are examples of extremely high quality FOSS toolchains, Debian and FreeBSD for operating systems.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

GeekyBear 5y ago

How quickly we forget what development costs looked like in the recent past >PlayStation developers need to cough up £ 12,000 for the full system (which Sony is adamant it doesn’t make money on), although all subsequent software tools and hardware upgrades are free. https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit Not to mention other obscene costs that were common, like charging developers to issue a patch for software sold online. >Double Fine's Tim Schaefer pegged the cost of submitting an Xbox 360 patch at $40,000 https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under-fire-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under...

wmf 5y ago
I don't know if that's a great comparison since only 7,918 PlayStation games were ever released while computers and phones have literally millions.

paxys 5y ago

Just reading the replies to this thread it's unbelievable how out of touch people are with how software development happens in most of the world. I can guarantee that there are many companies in India where the entire engineering department has less than $1000 worth of hardware combined.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]