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

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

#121

Post by rgovind »

gambiting wrote: post #113
bdavisx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Just to keep your expectations in check - I work for a major games company in the UK as a C++ programmer and make 25k pounds/year($36k USD). US salaries are an abnormality.

$35K is what a decent developer in India would make. So, your UK seems too low.

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

#122

Post by stcredzero »

leesalminen wrote: post #120
stcredzero wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is funny. I saw the same pattern in Smalltalk apps: Reports being the locus of spaghetti code. Reports are added as an afterthought. Then the resulting spaghetti code patterns are replicated cut & paste, where they then slowly melt into surrounding code in a way that makes them impossible to extricate. After some years, it then becomes obvious that reports are the primary driver of value for those clients.

Ugh, this. Have you had luck escaping that hell?

I knew enough to keep myself away from those projects.

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

#123

Post by stcredzero »

partisan wrote: post #107
stcredzero wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a developer and good at what you do, you will layer your application to buffer against changes. That's a good place to start. That's 80's and 90's best practice, though. (Most of the industry is stuck in this mindset, to be fair.) I'd say the 21st century version of this would be to structure your code in such a way that transformation tools can be easily applied.

So you understand my point.

The code architecture "win" is always to dodge the big manual rewrite. The "lose" is to have to do the big manual rewrite. People make it into a game of ideological purism, but really, it's as simple and pragmatic as just that.

They who dodge the manual rewrite -- those are the real gurus.

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

#125

Post by motti »

jventura wrote: post #52
pabloski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, if I can ask: "why QtWebkit instead of Qtquick?".

+1, I'm wondering if anyone is using Qt Quick for productivity-like desktop applications?

We (copycopy.com), do.

Atm we use a mix of QtQuick/QML and some widget code mainly when wrapping QtWebKit it for some parts of the app furniture that need it.

Although the guts of our app requires native code (for clipboard monitoring and websocket message receiving), were considering ditching much of the UI in favour of a webapp.

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

#126

Post by lj3 »

cylinder wrote: post #73

I can offer the perspective of the customer. I am a bit fed up with web apps these days, and would find a good desktop solution refreshing. You should include cloud backups and sync, however, that is key. But, web apps are getting slower and slower -- even the 1 or 2 seconds it takes to open a new link stresses me out when I'm in the zone and trying to work fast. I am even trying to move away from Gmail to Outlook no…

Would you still choose a desktop app over a web app if the web app's response time was within the 100ms window[0]? In other words, is speed your only complaint with web apps these days?

[0]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-...

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

#127

Post by sokoloff »

rgovind wrote: post #121
gambiting wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to keep your expectations in check - I work for a major games company in the UK as a C++ programmer and make 25k pounds/year($36k USD). US salaries are an abnormality.

$35K is what a decent developer in India would make. So, your UK seems too low.

Much of the games industry is incredibly low-paying. I felt fairly fortunate to have worked in my 20s for a good game company (where I was paid OK, learned a ton, and we eventually had an exit to Sierra), but I feel like most of my peers at other companies were working for terribly low pay and often under poor management.

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

#128

Post by partisan »

stcredzero wrote: post #123
partisan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you understand my point.

The code architecture "win" is always to dodge the big manual rewrite. The "lose" is to have to do the big manual rewrite. People make it into a game of ideological purism, but really, it's as simple and pragmatic as just that. They who dodge the manual rewrite -- those are the real gurus.

Being a guru and finishing product have close to 0 correlation. It doesn't matter how you would've/could've/should've done it if in the end, you didn't do it.

I'm just trying to encourage OP to finish a product and we've gone pretty far from that starting point with this discussion.

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

#129

Post by phodo »

mattront wrote: post #60

Our desktop app Pinegrow Web Editor ( http://pinegrow.com ) is build with HTML / JS / Node.js packaged with NWJS/Electron. Three years ago I started by myself, now we're three working on the app full time and making a comfortable living (mid six figures in yearly sales). Choosing this tech stack lets you postpone web vs desktop app decision and keep both options open. While recurring web app revenue sounds appealing…

I love pinegrow (paying customer).

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

#130

Post by derefr »

rxlim wrote: post #72

First, of course you can make a living out of desktop applications. In the echo chamber of HN you could maybe get the idea that they are no longer relevant, but out in the real world millions of people need to do real work, but don't have a stable connection to the Internet. Second, If you decide to create a desktop application, then make it native. I must strongly advise against using any of these "web frameworks" e…

> They only exists because many developers don't know anything else than web development

I know how to write native apps in C# with WPF, Obj-C with Cocoa, C++ with Qt, Erlang with WxWidgets, and even in pure Tcl/Tk. I still prefer using HTML5 to any/all of those. It's about multi-platform portability, where "the web" is itself one of the targeted platforms.

> I would NEVER install an application created using a web framework.

Do you use web apps in a browser? Gmail or Outlook.com, say? Why would them adopting more native UX controls make you stop using them, then?

If it's about the cost in non-shared runtime memory (i.e. basically running 5 separate instances of Chromium for five "apps"), this can be fixed; look, for example, at how the Chrome App Launcher works in Canary. Window-mode Chrome Apps are basically equivalent to Electron apps, but run as sandboxes under a common single-process runtime (Chrome) rather than each being a process of their own.

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