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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?

#181

Post by vram22 »

dejv wrote: post #173
fidz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Great serendipitous story.

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

#182

Post by vram22 »

gambiting wrote: post #176
ekr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't mind saying, what sort of area in the UK do you live in, where 25k pounds/year is a good salary?

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

#183

Post by vram22 »

fidz wrote: post #169
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…

What GUI Library do you recommend?

For Python, wxPython is good. Dropbox desktop clients are written in it, IIRC, and so are many other apps. Take a look at the demos in the Docs and Demos (separate EXE) that you can download from the wxPython site. Pretty good and gives an idea of wxPython's capabilities. For C++, wxWidgets (which wxPython is a wrapper for) or Qt should be good. Andy Brice, mentioned as a desktop product ISV in this thread, uses C++ and Qt and deploys to more than one desktop platform. IIRC Skype desktop was written in Qt.

There are also other GUI toolkit choices which are less mainstream and some may be less stable/documented/maintained.

Edit to add: Don't know about PyQt which is a wrapper for Qt, like wxPython is for wxWidgets.

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

#184

Post by ommunist »

suhastech wrote: post #22

I've been developing Horcrux Email Backup[1] over the years. The application had to be desktop by the nature of it. I'm not a living out of it but it is a very good side income. Given the fact that I live in a third world country helps too. [1] http://thehorcrux.com/

Very nice programme, that saves a lot of bacon. Please keep it maintained, I beg you.

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

#185

Post by gambiting »

vram22 wrote: post #182
gambiting wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't mind saying, what sort of area in the UK do you live in, where 25k pounds/year is a good salary?

North east. My partner makes 30k(as a web developer, no less) so together we can easily afford to rent a 4-bedroom house, have 2 cars and save enough to get a mortgage soon. On top of that having a job that I really enjoy is just icing on the cake, really not complaining.

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

#186

Post by ommunist »

k3liutZu wrote: post #87

Build it with web technologies, and if you need to ship a desktop app, package it with electron.

I remember the guy who just decided to keep Windows 3.11 on a Celeron laptop, because it was awesome fast on that hardware (still perceivably faster than your Win 10 notebook perhaps), and he just worked couple of years that way, until some SSL problems forced him to leave Win 3.11. But business applications were ok for him in that environment. The very idea of a desktop app is that it should be able to deliver value completely offline, imho.

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

#187

Post by Razengan »

As a user, I despise webapps, unless it's for social networking or news (like FB/Twitter/HN/Reddit/Imgur.) Even for social/news I prefer native apps to webapps when available.

I mean look at the native mobile apps for FB and everything; I'm sure the majority of users prefer opening the apps to using the browser, so there must be something going for them.

Webapps NEVER feel as responsive or powerful or fit into the look-and-feel of a platform, compared to native apps.

To me, most of the alleged advantages of webapps just look like the excuses of lazy developers, not to mention also a bit of hypocrisy: Would YOU prefer most of your IDEs and development tools to be webapps, or native apps?

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

#188

Post by vram22 »

gambiting wrote: post #185
vram22 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind saying, what sort of area in the UK do you live in, where 25k pounds/year is a good salary?

North east. My partner makes 30k(as a web developer, no less) so together we can easily afford to rent a 4-bedroom house, have 2 cars and save enough to get a mortgage soon. On top of that having a job that I really enjoy is just icing on the cake, really not complaining.

Got it, thanks.

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

#189

Post by danieltillett »

vram22 wrote: post #180
danieltillett wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I actually have written a custom fuzzer. It has been really useful in chasing out bugs caused by improper handling of corrupt files, but fuzzing won't help solve the combinatorial coverage problem.

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

#190

Post by delhanty »

lugus35 wrote: post #20
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #13

Yes, I am thriving with a niche C++/Win32 graphics app. Web apps are a long way from having the responsiveness and control of a desktop app. Do you really think users will be doing Photoshop and AutoCAD in a browser? No matter if you have a fibre op connection, the lag is always there. Recently the main player in this domain moved to Web apps. There was an overwhelming protest from its customers, who insisted they pr…

Well, as an autocad replacement you have: https://www.onshape.com/ and as a Photoshop replacement, you have things like : https://pixlr.com/ And yes, there are people using these online tools.

Onshape is much closer to a cloud version of Solidworks than to a cloud version of AutoCAD.
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