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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?

#171

Post by bung »

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'm not sure why it bothers me, maybe I'm just grumpy this morning haha, but I might have preferred "Enter your email for a free trial" rather than being forced to do it after I've already downloaded and installed and run it and can't use it.

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

#172

Post by rangera »

matheweis wrote: post #167

I don't make a living, but I'd like to think I'm close (3-5x would get me there) Anyhow, my strategy was to make both the web app and the desktop app. The web app is free, which drives users to the site, a small percentage of which buy the desktop app. The strategy works well, in the sense that I can run everything on autopilot for a few months at a time if I need to. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like the rela…

Programs like Nativefier allow you to quite easily (within reach of not-so-technical users) create desktop apps out of web apps. Unless your desktop app provides significant OS or other-app integration or additional features, you may want to reconsider your strategy.

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

#173

Post by dejv »

fidz wrote: post #168
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.

Is this the only app you maintain on daily basis? How did you get this client and how did you start this software?

Hard question. I am working on this software for almost 10 years now and there were times where I was working on it fulltime, there were times I was also working on numerous other apps and businesses, and also two years when I basically quit the tech industry to focus on wine making, but keep working on this app for couple of hours a week just because I don't want to let my business partner down.

Currently I am also doing some freelancing (iOS apps) and run my other tiny software company.

Starting this partnership is actually funny story: one day I seen an ad which says "Looking for programmer" and there was no other information or text, no company info nothing. At that time I was product manager with big team reporting to me and I feel quite unhappy, missing my days as a programmer, waking up at 5 am to do some coding for fun. I seen it as a sign, so I just replied, quit my job and the rest is history.

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

#174

Post by matheweis »

rangera wrote: post #172
matheweis wrote: post #167

I don't make a living, but I'd like to think I'm close (3-5x would get me there) Anyhow, my strategy was to make both the web app and the desktop app. The web app is free, which drives users to the site, a small percentage of which buy the desktop app. The strategy works well, in the sense that I can run everything on autopilot for a few months at a time if I need to. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like the rela…

Programs like Nativefier allow you to quite easily (within reach of not-so-technical users) create desktop apps out of web apps. Unless your desktop app provides significant OS or other-app integration or additional features, you may want to reconsider your strategy.

It does - that is the case for the upsell. :)

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

#175

Post by ekr »

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.

I'm still in college, and and an Eastern European country (where the average wage is around 550$). And I still make > 20k USD per year. So yeah, you are underpaid.

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

#176

Post by gambiting »

ekr wrote: post #175
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.

I'm still in college, and and an Eastern European country (where the average wage is around 550$). And I still make > 20k USD per year. So yeah, you are underpaid.

That only shows that you are being paid extremely well, not that I am paid poorly. To say that I am underpaid you would have to say - compared to what? To people doing jobs that have absolutely no interest to me? I like my job, I genuinely enjoy it. The money is enough to allow me to live very comfortably. If I lived in London, it would have been a different discussion - but out here, it's not bad at all.

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

#178

Post by jjp »

This feels to me like there are a few other questions to ask: - do your target users have a preference for desktop vs webapp? - can you achieve everything you want in desktop vs webapp? - How do similar solutions from competitors deliver? How would you differentiate? - do you have the skills/time/inclination to provide desktop support when a user can't get your software working with Win XP and a badly written printer driver? - What's the pricing model you will use with lone users? Sell once, sell once and then try and sell upgrade; subscription?

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

#179

Post by vram22 »

dejv wrote: post #70
danieltillett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> (250+k lines of code)

How big is the EXE?

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

#180

Post by vram22 »

danieltillett wrote: post #135
dejv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Thanks for the explanation. A lot of my code is getting old (just like me), but I was lucky in that it was designed from the start to be cross platform. This ended up meaning that it was written in C and all the platform specific code was kept as separate modules. My big problem is I have so many code paths that I can’t fully test the interactions between the different modules and functions (there are over 10^25 diff…

>My big problem is I have so many code paths that I can’t fully test the interactions between the different modules and functions (there are over 10^25 different possible paths).

Interesting. Have you considered the pros and cons of writing a custom fuzzer for your app, and whether it may help?

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