3 ms·

Why not leverage what you know and build web-based products/services?

by mkl 4y ago

badpun 4y ago
For a lot of people with technology taste, the web is offensive. Not to say that interfacing with say ugly Windows APIs is that much better, but at least you have way more control over the machine and your program, so (in systems programming) interfacing with ugly abstraction is only a minor part of your experience.
- type0 4y ago
  The trouble isn't just that it's offensive for people with technology understanding and taste, but the clients in web space often consider the tech and your work as disposable and they treat you as such.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Interesting. My previous company (large bank) really cherished the front-end devs on our team, because they knew how hard and annoying it would be to hire replacements for them. They definitely were not treated as disposable.
- torginus 4y ago
  The weird thing is the browser is amazing - it's a great 3D rendering, video and playing, video conferencing, UI displaying and animating, vector and raster graphics drawing etc. thing. And probably I barely scratched the surface with my list. It does all of these things either as good as the best native apps or at least quite competently. And it's all portable. No wonder Electron has eaten the native app scene. But the JS ecosystem with its myriad frameworks, packers, metalanguages, each halfway between immature and deprecated, and constant churn and breakage is an absolute nightmare.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Browser is not great for 3D rendering, unless you mean 3D rendering like it's still 2005 (performance-wise). The browser is not able to handle any modern AAA games for example. Also, the browser does not have an out-of-the box set of standard UI widgets, which makes every browser-based (Electron) app redefine them in its unique way.
hsn915 4y ago
It will be indeed web related, but not a hosted service with a monthly recurring subscription. Instead, a stand-along product that would allow you to "own" your web presense and not be tied to any specific company.
porker 4y ago
> Why not leverage what you know and build web-based products/services? Because it's really difficult. I find I can keep a big-picture, this is what the customer wants mindset, or I can have a detail-oriented this is the code that I want to improve mindset, but having both and/or switching between them is amazingly difficult. As I write the code I lose sight of what 'normal' people (non-programmers) want. I don't even know how to pitch to their level any more, or what isn't obvious to people who haven't spent 20+ years using and thinking about computers every day. tl;dr: programming changes the way I think in a way that's unhelpful to build a product. Next there's promotion and marketing... which is another skillset that depending how hard you want to push the product may/may not sit well with your ethics. Thirdly and this is a personal one, I have an ADD brain and staying focused on one idea long enough to take it to market is very difficult. I have a list of ideas I dreamed up and started work on and never finished that someone else later launched successfully. As does everyone I suspect (execution >> ideas) but it's a neverending pattern (as I look at the 30+ OS projects on the go)
- hsn915 4y ago
  I've seen several people echo this, but for me it's the opposite. I start from the end goal and all the code is only there to serve the end goal. The end goal usually being the product and the value it's supposed to provide to its users. What I have trouble with is marketing and sales. I've never sold anything directly to consumers, so that will be the most challenging thing when going independent: selling to people. Let's say I sell the product for $50, I would have to sell to 2000 people in one year to make $100k, which means I have to sell to at least 6 people per day. Now it would be great if people just found the product and bought it on their own, but at least the first 1000 costumers must be acquired "manually" so to speak for the business to even take off.

Why not leverage what you know and build web-based products/services?

by mkl 4y ago

Why not leverage what you know and build web-based products/services?

For a lot of people with technology taste, the web is offensive. Not to say that interfacing with say ugly Windows APIs is that much better, but at least you have way more control over the machine and your program, so (in systems programming) interfacing with ugly abstraction is only a minor part of your experience.

type0 4y ago
The trouble isn't just that it's offensive for people with technology understanding and taste, but the clients in web space often consider the tech and your work as disposable and they treat you as such.
- badpun 4y ago
  Interesting. My previous company (large bank) really cherished the front-end devs on our team, because they knew how hard and annoying it would be to hire replacements for them. They definitely were not treated as disposable.
torginus 4y ago
The weird thing is the browser is amazing - it's a great 3D rendering, video and playing, video conferencing, UI displaying and animating, vector and raster graphics drawing etc. thing. And probably I barely scratched the surface with my list. It does all of these things either as good as the best native apps or at least quite competently. And it's all portable. No wonder Electron has eaten the native app scene. But the JS ecosystem with its myriad frameworks, packers, metalanguages, each halfway between immature and deprecated, and constant churn and breakage is an absolute nightmare.
- badpun 4y ago
  Browser is not great for 3D rendering, unless you mean 3D rendering like it's still 2005 (performance-wise). The browser is not able to handle any modern AAA games for example. Also, the browser does not have an out-of-the box set of standard UI widgets, which makes every browser-based (Electron) app redefine them in its unique way.

hsn915 4y ago

It will be indeed web related, but not a hosted service with a monthly recurring subscription. Instead, a stand-along product that would allow you to "own" your web presense and not be tied to any specific company.

porker 4y ago

> Why not leverage what you know and build web-based products/services? Because it's really difficult. I find I can keep a big-picture, this is what the customer wants mindset, or I can have a detail-oriented this is the code that I want to improve mindset, but having both and/or switching between them is amazingly difficult. As I write the code I lose sight of what 'normal' people (non-programmers) want. I don't even know how to pitch to their level any more, or what isn't obvious to people who haven't spent 20+ years using and thinking about computers every day. tl;dr: programming changes the way I think in a way that's unhelpful to build a product. Next there's promotion and marketing... which is another skillset that depending how hard you want to push the product may/may not sit well with your ethics. Thirdly and this is a personal one, I have an ADD brain and staying focused on one idea long enough to take it to market is very difficult. I have a list of ideas I dreamed up and started work on and never finished that someone else later launched successfully. As does everyone I suspect (execution >> ideas) but it's a neverending pattern (as I look at the 30+ OS projects on the go)

hsn915 4y ago
I've seen several people echo this, but for me it's the opposite. I start from the end goal and all the code is only there to serve the end goal. The end goal usually being the product and the value it's supposed to provide to its users. What I have trouble with is marketing and sales. I've never sold anything directly to consumers, so that will be the most challenging thing when going independent: selling to people. Let's say I sell the product for $50, I would have to sell to 2000 people in one year to make $100k, which means I have to sell to at least 6 people per day. Now it would be great if people just found the product and bought it on their own, but at least the first 1000 costumers must be acquired "manually" so to speak for the business to even take off.