Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#61

Post by jventura » Mon, May 09, 2016, 1:17 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #43

jventura wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The application that I want to build is for a niche market (but not for companies), that is why I am in doubt between desktop and web. One thing that makes me want to stay way from web is that if this thing does not work, I would like people to continue using the application, even if I don't update it anymore. If it runs on a server, I will not be able to stop the server until everyone stops using the application for…

How long will it take to develop your desktop application? If it is just a few weeks or very few months go for it and test the market. If it doesn't work after spending some marketing efforts move away. Indeed nobody can predict your success. Again, I think it is very difficult to attack the desktop market even if you target a niche market for end users. Enteprises uses are a different story. One more thing if you in…

> One more thing if you insist: look at the OSX desktop market too because the dynamics of the end user consumption are different from Windows.

Definitely, even more as I develop primarily on a Mac.. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#62

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 09, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

DizzyDoo wrote: post #23

I'm making video games for PC, Mac and Linux (like this one - http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 ), it's a very traditional release cycle, I work on a project for x months, and then I release it, moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support. PC games are generally seen as more valuable than mobile games, so I don't need to sell a terribly large volume in order for me, a single developer, t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#63

Post by pradipmj » Mon, May 09, 2016, 1:42 PM UTC

DizzyDoo wrote: post #48

otoburb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> [...] moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support [...] How do you handle patches for prior games into your workflow (i.e. long-term maintenance)? Do you build up an issue queue and then work on patches in between major releases?

That's exactly how I do things. I'm very glad that by distributing digitally, it's incredibly easy to roll out small fixes that are applied as incremental patches, so I don't tend to 'save up' for major updates. A benefit that comes with a stable engine is that it's already been tested on a wide variety of hardware, so most of the issues I fix are very rare gameplay bugs.

Hi , Can you tell us how you are rolling out patches to your unity client. As far as I know unity doesn't have an inbuilt updater. But there are few plugins on the unity asset store which do that. But they don't cover all scenarios.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#64

Post by csense » Mon, May 09, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

DizzyDoo wrote: post #23

I'm making video games for PC, Mac and Linux (like this one - http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 ), it's a very traditional release cycle, I work on a project for x months, and then I release it, moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support. PC games are generally seen as more valuable than mobile games, so I don't need to sell a terribly large volume in order for me, a single developer, t…

This game looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#65

Post by justncase80 » Mon, May 09, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

Try making it with Electron http://electron.atom.io/

Then if you decide later you want it to be a web app its not that big of a job to convert it.

I have worked on a surprising number of desktop apps over the years, including Visual Studio and Internet Explorer. But even before that, a lot of businesses rely on desktop applications for a lot of their internal applications.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#66

Post by anotherevan » Mon, May 09, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

There's a guy called Andy Brice[1] who has been developing and selling desktop software for table seating plans[2] since 2005. He blogs[3] a bit about his experiences and thoughts.

[1] https://twitter.com/successfulsw

[2] http://www.perfecttableplan.com/

[3] https://successfulsoftware.net/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#67

Post by DizzyDoo » Mon, May 09, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

pradipmj wrote: post #63

DizzyDoo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how I do things. I'm very glad that by distributing digitally, it's incredibly easy to roll out small fixes that are applied as incremental patches, so I don't tend to 'save up' for major updates. A benefit that comes with a stable engine is that it's already been tested on a wide variety of hardware, so most of the issues I fix are very rare gameplay bugs.

Hi , Can you tell us how you are rolling out patches to your unity client. As far as I know unity doesn't have an inbuilt updater. But there are few plugins on the unity asset store which do that. But they don't cover all scenarios.

As I sell mainly on Steam, Steam handles the updating, it works out the diff and updates the files that have changed.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#68

Post by commentzorro » Mon, May 09, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

I have a couple Windows desktop apps (animal husbandry and event management) that have been around for years and still doing quite well. But I think these succeed primarily because they have a nice specific vertical and are particularly well suited for desktops.

For me, a successful desktop application has the following traits:

-- A nice specific vertical that is deep and complex to process,

-- Complex entry screens with lots of necessary rules and data validation,

-- Lots of manual data manipulation during the events,

-- Substantial benefit from ability to take advantage of desktop level mouse and keyboard actions,

-- Some complex grid based screens that can be tailored by each user,

-- Fairly complex reporting after the events.

These requirements are still too much for browsers to handle well. The grid based screens are especially horrible in browsers. And browser apps are still pretty horrible for complex data entry screens that want to be customized by the user.

That said, I'm porting the first to a mixed mode where the engine will be internet based but the primary interface will still be the "normal" download and install desktop model. This is to allow some portions to be used in a browser, but the main application still keep the full desktop power.

FWIW: my original apps were Delphi based, but the language long ago stagnated and had become tedious (comparatively). Since I'd switched to .NET for contract work, I started my rewrite in C#. But but I ended up hating the server deployment crap with .NET and also of got really tired the direction Microsoft is going in general. I've now switched C# for the desktop side and Google's Go language for the web/model portion. I picked Go primarily for the trivial single executable deployment. While I don't really get much enjoyment out of coding in Go, it is eminently practical for this type of work. (Note for Gophers: I don't think Go is bad either ... just sort of there. I do use it quite a bit these day and do get the "fun vs practical" trade-offs the Go team made.)

But the future may be bleak with Microsoft moving to an app store. Why the F do I want Microsoft sitting between me and my customers. It adds no benefit to me and provides no benefit to my customers for a portable or unzip and go desktop application. Plus they, like Apple and Google, want to become effectively the worlds most expensive payment processors.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#69

Post by bdavisx » Mon, May 09, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

DizzyDoo wrote: post #23

I'm making video games for PC, Mac and Linux (like this one - http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 ), it's a very traditional release cycle, I work on a project for x months, and then I release it, moving onto the next game after a few weeks of post-launch support. PC games are generally seen as more valuable than mobile games, so I don't need to sell a terribly large volume in order for me, a single developer, t…

When you say "make a living" - how does that compare to a "typical" US developer salary/benefits - say around $120K total compensation? (and yes, I know that's far below a SV total compensation, but you wouldn't have to live in SV for this kind of lifestyle business).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#70

Post by dejv » Mon, May 09, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #11

dejv wrote: post #7

I make living off desktop app in construction industry. The app is 21 years old and is still written in Delphi 5. I still actively maintaining it and it runs fairly well on modern Windows OSes, but there were some low level problems in recent years. We are team of two: I am sole developer and there is another person doing sales, support, training and all the rest of stuff.

What are the low level problems you have been running into?

Three main things: - memory space for printers and sound cards changed in Vista, so when you have some constellation of printers and you change the printer in dialog whole program just crash, because it is trying to touch restricted memory or something.

- running Paradox in network is quite difficult. Whole database was written in 80s before things like tcp/ip was thought as a good thing and all the networking part was hacked inside and it shows. Because of weird architectural choices made 20+ years ago I am not able to migrate out to sane database without rewriting whole application. (250+k lines of code)

- BDE could be quite unstable in various scenarios and you spend quite a lot of time fiddling with memory space, memory size and other variables to make it work.