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Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#41

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Sure.

It's just another marketing/sales numbers-based decision. If I had an app that targeted MS Office apps, for instance, I wouldn't have a bit of a problem writing it on the client.

I'd take it a step further. If I had an app that took a minute to load the first time over the web, I'd seriously consider just targeting the client and getting more bang for the buck.

The reason some folks stay on the web is that people don't want to wait to use anything. If you can show them a working app they can play with in under 5 seconds, your click-through and sales go up. You can't do that with client apps.

Nothing special about web or client, it's all just a numbers decision (or at least, it should be)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#42

Post by pm »

Writing clients is fun; writing cross-platform clients even moreso. Each platform has its own design philosophy, and I find it engaging learning each platform's intricacies, and coming to understand the psychology behind each platform's demographic.

I believe the greatest measure of an application is the user's productivity, and I believe most of that productivity is inherent in the design of the user interface. The users of each platform have different expectations of their user interface, however, so I believe it's my duty when developing cross-platform applications to be mindful of these expectations.

The work may seem unglamorous to most programmers, but if you can't get the human half of the interface right, any gains on the computer half of the interface are moot. That being said, I think most YC hackers do have an appreciation for this logic, it's just that client software is overkill for their requirements.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#43

Post by sjs382 »

zhyder wrote: post #38
sjs382 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@op: Have you considered hiring someone who develops AIR applications for the client software? I'd imagine AIR developers are more in the YC-Hacker-mold because the boring things mentioned above are abstracted by the runtime.

All except the look-and-feel bit. Mac users want apps to have the Mac look-and-feel, though perhaps Windows and Linux users aren't as adamant about it, so maybe a Mac-ish look-and-feel can be the common denominator. Also many users wouldn't want to install the AIR runtime.

Well, as always, it depends on the audience...

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#44

Post by webwright »

vlad wrote: post #39

I've written a shareware app with a good GUI. I am not interested in working on it or any desktop app. Xobni is the only YC company I've heard of where the primary product or solution is a desktop app, so I think YCombinator also prefers web based apps. By the way, I've always wondered--is there a feature in your product that monitors how often you mention RescueTime on news.YC and elsewhere? If there's not, or if it…

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%...

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+r...

Looks like 66 of the 481 pages with the word RescueTime somewhere on them have my username somewhere on the page. I imagine many of those are assorted duplicate views of the same comment and many more are threads where one person mentioned RT and I responded.

Feel free to sort thru the times that I've mentioned RescueTime to see if I meet your obviously high standards for contributing to the community.

Being a troll and finishing with a ":)" doesn't really make it okay.

:)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#46

Post by wheels »

rcoder wrote: post #22

The problem with finding really great hackers who want to do client-side coding is that a huge percentage of the work required to implement such apps is boring crap: compatibility testing, look-and-feel review, installer authoring, and collection of client configurations from issue reports. You can implement more features in less time when you deliver thin-client solutions. Also, the knowledge required to deploy apps…

A huge percentage of the work required to implement web apps is boring crap: browser testing, working around bugs for quirks in different browsers, look and feel review, screwing around with stuff in five different languages / formats just to do something trivial (i.e. Javascript, CSS, HTML, Python, SQL) ...

I really don't think there are many web developers that can pound out an interactive web GUI with the speed that I can bang out a cross-platform desktop app with a reasonable toolkit. There's a natural bias here towards web apps since this is a web-app community, but there are a lot of great developers out there that like working on desktop stuff.

@webwright -- feel free to contact me. I know a lot of people from the KDE world that do cross-platform apps; I could try to put you in touch with some people.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#47

Post by neovive »

zhyder wrote: post #38
sjs382 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@op: Have you considered hiring someone who develops AIR applications for the client software? I'd imagine AIR developers are more in the YC-Hacker-mold because the boring things mentioned above are abstracted by the runtime.

All except the look-and-feel bit. Mac users want apps to have the Mac look-and-feel, though perhaps Windows and Linux users aren't as adamant about it, so maybe a Mac-ish look-and-feel can be the common denominator. Also many users wouldn't want to install the AIR runtime.

Either way they have to install something (either your app or the AIR runtime). At least installing the AIR runtime once, gives them access to other AIR applications as well.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#48

Post by zach »

My advice: hire a sharp game programmer, specifically one who has worked on tools and has 1-5 years in the game industry. The pay is not that great for game programmers in that range of experience, so they can handle a startup salary. And they are typically enthusiastic and experienced in the right areas you want.

Many such programmers are burned out or just laid off, so they will consider working outside of games, but you have to bait them a little so they know you're not a corporate dullard. I would suggest a job listing with some game-programmer keywords or even sneaking onto CreativeHeads or Gamasutra.

I say this not in an exploitative mode, but because that was my profile when I jumped from games into a job as a 2000-era dot-com client software programmer. They specifically mentioned that they were looking for console programming experience because there were several former game programmers there who understood this dynamic. And I was quite happy with the time I spent there.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore?

#50

Post by Shorel »

I was looking for a job a couple of years ago, doing precisely that, in wxWidgets. And everybody seemed to hate C++ and love Java and related 'new' languages.

Right now, I'm working full time doing PHP and I want to keep the job stability even with that slow language, so sorry, too late.

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