The Cost of Developers • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cost of Developers

#201

Post by flylib » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

ealexhudson wrote: post #25

rsp1984 wrote: post #13

There are times when I really like the thoughtful analysis on Stratechery and there are other times when I think it's a complete pile of detached-from-reality horsesh!t. Today is of the 2nd kind. What it also has is a potentially fatal weakness: no platform with user-based leverage. Sorry, what? Windows still has > 90% market share on desktop. If that isn't "user-based leverage" I don't know what is. This, by the way…

Github would have had trouble getting more VC investment. According to Bloomberg, there are ~21M software developers in the world, and Github has ~24M user accounts. There's little userbase growth possible there; they would have had to start increasing revenue per user rapidly to be interesting for another VC round. Equally, on their $200M revenue (or whatever it was), they would struggle to get a multiple that would…

is this a joke? Investors were begging to get in Github it's whole history, no surprise it sold for 7.5 billion

Re: The Cost of Developers

#202

Post by icedchai » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #174

icedchai wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Equity isn't debt. 2) Profits? You must be kidding. Take a look at some SaaS companies that have gone public in the last 5 years. Few are profitable. It's all about growth of revenue. The profits are way down the line.

Equity is absolutely a form of debt, especially when given to the kinds of VCs that demand high exits. Maybe if there were VCs who would be happy to own part of the company and be satisfied with the dividends from Github's revenue, it'd be a different story.

Maybe startups should go out and get true debt financing, then they don't have to give up that valuable stock? Oh, wait a minute, they generally can't because they have no real assets to borrow against. No, equity is not debt.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#203

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

citrablue wrote: post #169

scarface74 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a great idea for a non game piece of software, what market would you target? Windows, Web, or mobile? Where are all of the mythical profitable companies making commercial desktop software? Where are all the companies making new internal line of business desktop software?

Much manufacturing and warehouse software is on Windows, with extremely high end costs. ERPs, some are moving to the cloud but so much is still hosted locally. With HUGE annual license fees (often in the millions per year). These systems are slow, unintuitive, and annoying. But they're stable. Companies don't want to risk their existence to change something that sort of works, so you'd be amazed at what a ERP solutio…

How much of the software that is hosted locally is web based software? My point is not that everyone is moving to the cloud, my point is how many new initiatives are being targeted at the "windows desktop"? Microsoft's only leverage was customers dependence on Windows APIs and fat client Windows Software.

Isn't most of Oracle's desktop software written in Java and doesn't it run on anything that runs Java?

Re: The Cost of Developers

#204

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #199

scarface74 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name some companies making any substantial money selling Windows desktop apps besides Microsoft and Adobe? Again games don't count, they aren't for the most part developing "Windows apps" they are developing apps on top of game engines.

Games are one of the few remaining pieces of software that require tight platform integration. And even this is changing with WebGL. If you take games totally out of the equation, App Store profits drop substantially. Most third-party apps are games or native wrappers for web UIs (pinterest, spotify, netflix). Of those, most are free or tied to a subscription that's device independent.

Even if that's the case, that still supports my original point that Microsoft having 90% of the desktop PC market has become increasingly meaningless in the age of web and then mobile. In the grand scheme of things, few new software initiatives are targeting Windows compared to web and mobile and only a select few companies are making any real money writing desktop software.

The example given of Autodesk kind of proves my point. They have the same annual revenue making CAD software that King digital has making Candy Crush.

Games aren't tightly tied to a single mobile platform now - most of them use a cross platform game engine. The reason they won't go to the web is payments are frictionless on mobile and you don't have to trust anyone but the platform provider.

Today anyone can setup their own shopping site and probably manage their own shipping but most small merchants still sell on Amazon.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#205

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #176

citrablue wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much manufacturing and warehouse software is on Windows, with extremely high end costs. ERPs, some are moving to the cloud but so much is still hosted locally. With HUGE annual license fees (often in the millions per year). These systems are slow, unintuitive, and annoying. But they're stable. Companies don't want to risk their existence to change something that sort of works, so you'd be amazed at what a ERP solutio…

But to answer the parent poster's question, if you were developing a new piece of manufacturing/warehouse solution, would you write it as a native windows app or would you target web or mobile? Is the claim that manufacturing/warehouse software is and will be on windows... forever?

Of course they wouldn't. They would either do it on the web or mobile. My first .Net job was writing Windows mobile apps for field technicians and factory workers on ruggedized devices. I've since written software for field service workers for Android tablets. They definitely weren't going to be carrying around Windows laptops.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#206

Post by oblio » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #198

oblio wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tripled the stock price. I doubt shareholders are sad :)

Brutus said eventually, and that's an entirely reasonable statement. Microsoft has burned many, many billions on foolish ventures to try to regain namespace, while at the same time the entirety of their revenue is still based on the coasting remains of the empire they built a decade ago. Microsoft's revenue has stagnated, despite endlessly acquiring and adding new verticals to the stack. To put it another way, simply…

Azure is a new business.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#207

Post by ascorbic » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

forgotAgain wrote: post #138

My experience is that developers are hardcore in their opinion on Microsoft: they are either all in or have no interest in dealing with them. I don't see Microsoft being able to move developers with this purchase.

I'd imagine there are a significant number of developers using VS Code and no other Microsoft products.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#208

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #204

mywittyname wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games are one of the few remaining pieces of software that require tight platform integration. And even this is changing with WebGL. If you take games totally out of the equation, App Store profits drop substantially. Most third-party apps are games or native wrappers for web UIs (pinterest, spotify, netflix). Of those, most are free or tied to a subscription that's device independent.

Even if that's the case, that still supports my original point that Microsoft having 90% of the desktop PC market has become increasingly meaningless in the age of web and then mobile. In the grand scheme of things, few new software initiatives are targeting Windows compared to web and mobile and only a select few companies are making any real money writing desktop software. The example given of Autodesk kind of prov…

I mean, I agree with your argument -- I'm just extending it to say that no platform dominance matters in the era of the web. Any software with mass-market appeal is going to be web-based so that it can reach the largest possible audience.

Re: The Cost of Developers

#209

Post by endorphone » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #206

endorphone wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brutus said eventually, and that's an entirely reasonable statement. Microsoft has burned many, many billions on foolish ventures to try to regain namespace, while at the same time the entirety of their revenue is still based on the coasting remains of the empire they built a decade ago. Microsoft's revenue has stagnated, despite endlessly acquiring and adding new verticals to the stack. To put it another way, simply…

Azure is a new business.

Azure has negligible profit (if any), and it's profoundly telling that Microsoft always hogties Azure numbers with Windows Server sales. The press remarkably buys this hook line and sinker, repeats this Intelligent Cloud prattle as if it's true.

[As an aside, Microsoft's continuing tendency to group success with losers, shuffling them around to opaque the numbers, is something that sees far less skepticism than it should. We saw this with Windows Mobile cum Phone where they tried to put on the face of success for as long as possible]

Microsoft was traditionally a very high profit margin company, and their software offerings still are. Azure might sound good to make them seem like they're still with it, but it is deadly long term (massive capital expenses, fast depreciation, and very low margins).

Re: The Cost of Developers

#210

Post by endorphone » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #200

endorphone wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like spurious logic, especially given that Microsoft has spent many, many billions of their cash hoard on a stock buyback program (as does Apple, etc). By the broken logic of that Slate article, they're throwing money down a well foolishly because shares outstanding are "free". Further, noting the current day price change is always the basis for countless nonsense articles. The shares haven't been diluted…

Remember that AOL was able to buy Time Warner with inflated stock. If you have inflated currency (I.e. stock), why not use it to buy some real assets?

Whether a share price is inflated or not is always a point of contention -- if it's so obvious we can all buy our put options and retire on our riches. However Microsoft could literally have sold $7.5B worth of new shares and given that money to charity (which, in turn, would have been a nice tax benefit).

That money is very real, and there is nothing free about it.