6 ms·

> Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. I'd say it's more that

> Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. I'd say it's more that this is the actual "developer shortage" that was being talked about a decade ago, but everyone mistakenly and stupidly interpreted it to be a shortage of tech workers for the larger firms. The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off are extremely few and far between right now. And even then, I just listed four specialties that historically have been specialized by a single person for each field - something like this would require a given person having a sufficient breadth of knowledge in all of them at the same time. It's a very tall order. And that's all just to compete on Windows. Adding Mac and Linux into the mix makes it even harder.

wvenable 10mo ago
I wrote a blog post about this. There is literally no end to the amount of software that could be produced for businesses. My job right is to write software for particular niche; we purchase all the major software and yet I will still never run out of software to build internally. Literally everything sucks right now because all industries are running a massive software deficit. It's just not possible (and maybe not economical viable) to build enough software to make everything not suck. We are making do with the scraps we have.
- discreteevent 10mo ago
  Do you think that LLMs will do much to help to alleviate this?
  - wvenable 10mo ago
    I just did a major refactor of a project to move it many versions up on a framework and whole process was effectively vibe coded. I'd estimate I did in a couple of days what would have taken a couple of weeks. That's good and expect that could be shaved down even more. I was spending most of time just waiting for it do the work. But I don't know if that fundamentally changes the situation or not. We've had steady improvements in developer technology for decades. Even pre-LLM, I'm building significantly more complicated applications now in less time than ever before. But as quickly as our developer technology improved, the demands on applications we build has gone up. I'm not sure even LLMs can outpace the demand for software.
    - discreteevent 10mo ago
      Thanks for your honest opinion. Not sure why you were downvoted.
      - MrBuddyCasino 10mo ago
        I don’t get it either. I feel people are increasingly knee-jerk about downvoting, triggered by certain phrases, perhaps „vibe-coding“ in this case.
      - elbear 10mo ago
        Likely because some people don't like to hear about positive experiences with LLMs.
- dabockster 10mo ago
  I think it is economically viable but we as devs have to realize our true worth here beyond just a paycheck.
- kleinishere 10mo ago
  Link to blog post? Didn’t see it on quick look at your site.
- RHSeeger 10mo ago
  > It's just not possible (and maybe not economical viable) to build enough software to make everything not suck. Honestly, it's been my experience that there's no motivation to do this, either. Many of the people that buy the software are more interested in a shiny, new button than they are in making sure all the existing buttons do what they want. And they each want a _different_ shiny, new button... and too many (barely functional) features just makes a product worse. > not economical viable I think that's part of the key. Nobody wants to pay for great software
  - protocolture 10mo ago
    >Honestly, it's been my experience that there's no motivation to do this, either. Many of the people that buy the software are more interested in a shiny, new button than they are in making sure all the existing buttons do what they want. And they each want a _different_ shiny, new button... and too many (barely functional) features just makes a product worse. I was working at a particular organisation 13 years ago, and we were tired. Everything was a half completed project. Everything needed work. One of the file servers was busted. We had cobbled together enough to make the customer experience ok, but the guts were on the deck. The organisation expanded, hired a new CTO, moved the old Pseudo CTO to an architect role. New CTO sat down with everyone in the team for a 1 on 1 chat. He asked what the biggest issue was, I said we needed time to fix everything and make it work. He said everyone on the team told him the same thing. That we have a solid environment and it just needs to be completed. Next day he announces a shift to the cloud. We had all our priorities suspended as we forced 365 and Azure into everything. I bailed like 3 weeks later.
the__alchemist 10mo ago
> And that's all just to compete on Windows. Adding Mac and Linux into the mix makes it even harder. Cross-platform compatibility is trivial with modern tooling IMO.
- longor1996 10mo ago
  On the surface level, building/compiling/running, maybe... But properly integrating with a given platform (or hell, version of platform!) is a whole new world of pain. :(
Den_VR 10mo ago
The talent that would do such a thing gets acquihired while the competition meets an early end.
rprend 10mo ago
There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.
- shiroiuma 10mo ago
  There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold?
  - xstas1 10mo ago
    They're working on it.
    - vee-kay 10mo ago
      Starting with the ads. Windows 11 was launched for precisely this purpose. Because what better way to milk daily revenue from existing millions of Windows PCs than to show desktop-level ads. The actual product price increases are an added boost to the M$ coffers. Microsoft thinks that most students/home users will not run away instead to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and maybe it's right, since they had decades to do so.
      - shiroiuma 10mo ago
        They are right, but they're too slow in realizing this. I of course switched to Linux decades ago, but for ages now, I've constantly heard people swearing "this is the last straw Microsoft! I'm going to switch to Linux!" because of some transgression and then they never do. A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits. And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?
snarfy 10mo ago
Outside of any engineering issues there are a plethora of regulatory and compliance barriers. I think this is actually a much bigger issue than lack of developers.
aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
> > Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. > The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off are extremely few and far between right now. I think the problem is different: those who are capable of pulling off such a task commonly lack the "business credibility" that is necessary so that C-level executives would buy a product from them. Getting the skills in all these disciplines is a much-more-than-fulltime job. If you spend all your time cramming, you simply don't have time to build this "business credibility".

wvenable 10mo ago

I wrote a blog post about this. There is literally no end to the amount of software that could be produced for businesses. My job right is to write software for particular niche; we purchase all the major software and yet I will still never run out of software to build internally. Literally everything sucks right now because all industries are running a massive software deficit. It's just not possible (and maybe not economical viable) to build enough software to make everything not suck. We are making do with the scraps we have.

discreteevent 10mo ago
Do you think that LLMs will do much to help to alleviate this?
- wvenable 10mo ago
  I just did a major refactor of a project to move it many versions up on a framework and whole process was effectively vibe coded. I'd estimate I did in a couple of days what would have taken a couple of weeks. That's good and expect that could be shaved down even more. I was spending most of time just waiting for it do the work. But I don't know if that fundamentally changes the situation or not. We've had steady improvements in developer technology for decades. Even pre-LLM, I'm building significantly more complicated applications now in less time than ever before. But as quickly as our developer technology improved, the demands on applications we build has gone up. I'm not sure even LLMs can outpace the demand for software.
  - discreteevent 10mo ago
    Thanks for your honest opinion. Not sure why you were downvoted.
    - MrBuddyCasino 10mo ago
      I don’t get it either. I feel people are increasingly knee-jerk about downvoting, triggered by certain phrases, perhaps „vibe-coding“ in this case.
    - elbear 10mo ago
      Likely because some people don't like to hear about positive experiences with LLMs.
dabockster 10mo ago
I think it is economically viable but we as devs have to realize our true worth here beyond just a paycheck.
kleinishere 10mo ago
Link to blog post? Didn’t see it on quick look at your site.
RHSeeger 10mo ago
> It's just not possible (and maybe not economical viable) to build enough software to make everything not suck. Honestly, it's been my experience that there's no motivation to do this, either. Many of the people that buy the software are more interested in a shiny, new button than they are in making sure all the existing buttons do what they want. And they each want a _different_ shiny, new button... and too many (barely functional) features just makes a product worse. > not economical viable I think that's part of the key. Nobody wants to pay for great software
- protocolture 10mo ago
  >Honestly, it's been my experience that there's no motivation to do this, either. Many of the people that buy the software are more interested in a shiny, new button than they are in making sure all the existing buttons do what they want. And they each want a _different_ shiny, new button... and too many (barely functional) features just makes a product worse. I was working at a particular organisation 13 years ago, and we were tired. Everything was a half completed project. Everything needed work. One of the file servers was busted. We had cobbled together enough to make the customer experience ok, but the guts were on the deck. The organisation expanded, hired a new CTO, moved the old Pseudo CTO to an architect role. New CTO sat down with everyone in the team for a 1 on 1 chat. He asked what the biggest issue was, I said we needed time to fix everything and make it work. He said everyone on the team told him the same thing. That we have a solid environment and it just needs to be completed. Next day he announces a shift to the cloud. We had all our priorities suspended as we forced 365 and Azure into everything. I bailed like 3 weeks later.

the__alchemist 10mo ago

> And that's all just to compete on Windows. Adding Mac and Linux into the mix makes it even harder. Cross-platform compatibility is trivial with modern tooling IMO.

longor1996 10mo ago
On the surface level, building/compiling/running, maybe... But properly integrating with a given platform (or hell, version of platform!) is a whole new world of pain. :(

Den_VR 10mo ago

The talent that would do such a thing gets acquihired while the competition meets an early end.

rprend 10mo ago

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.

shiroiuma 10mo ago
There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold?
- xstas1 10mo ago
  They're working on it.
  - vee-kay 10mo ago
    Starting with the ads. Windows 11 was launched for precisely this purpose. Because what better way to milk daily revenue from existing millions of Windows PCs than to show desktop-level ads. The actual product price increases are an added boost to the M$ coffers. Microsoft thinks that most students/home users will not run away instead to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and maybe it's right, since they had decades to do so.
    - shiroiuma 10mo ago
      They are right, but they're too slow in realizing this. I of course switched to Linux decades ago, but for ages now, I've constantly heard people swearing "this is the last straw Microsoft! I'm going to switch to Linux!" because of some transgression and then they never do. A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits. And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?

snarfy 10mo ago

Outside of any engineering issues there are a plethora of regulatory and compliance barriers. I think this is actually a much bigger issue than lack of developers.

aleph_minus_one 10mo ago

> > Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. > The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off are extremely few and far between right now. I think the problem is different: those who are capable of pulling off such a task commonly lack the "business credibility" that is necessary so that C-level executives would buy a product from them. Getting the skills in all these disciplines is a much-more-than-fulltime job. If you spend all your time cramming, you simply don't have time to build this "business credibility".