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Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#81

Post by bmj »

fxtentacle wrote: post #61

Yes and no. I'm an employee so it doesn't really matter, but my side-project desktop apps pay well enough that I could live off them if I go for a student lifestyle (no pricey events, no restaurants, cooking yourself, cleaning yourself). It was a long way. I started in the Pro Audio niche and initially supported Windows, Linux, Mac. Over time, I learned the hard way that supporting Apple's constantly changing OS is v…

cleaning yourself

I did not realize this was a mark of the student life. Who knew I was still a student at age 49?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#83

Post by hermitcrab »

eps wrote: post #57
mapmap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the state of the art in shareware for drop in payment / piracy protection?

Re: payments - it depends on the country, but generally Stripe + PayPal + bank wires for larger/enterprise purchases. Alternatively, Braintree. An altogether different option is to pay 2x the commission and use "full-service" reseller frontends like Digital River, PayProGlobal, etc. These are referred to as "registrators" and they used to be useful, because getting a merchant account and processing cards was a royal…

Handling taxes (VAT, sales tax) when you are selling worldwide is a nightmare. That is why many vendors pay the extra to use 'full fat' payment processors, rather than Stripe.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#84

Post by terhechte »

I've worked for the past ~2 years (in my spare time) on a macOS / iPadOS presentation app: https://hyperdeck.io

It isn't released yet, but I do have some loyal beta users, so I'm hopeful that some of them will buy the app once the last couple of issues are fixed.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#86

Post by hermitcrab »

eatonphil wrote: post #4

I'm building a desktop-first (SaaS-eventual) data IDE for developers [0]. Making a living? Not yet. It being desktop-first makes it as easy to try out in a corporate environment as Sublime. The data never leaves your machine. Desktop-first is a big deal in devtools for this reason. [0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation

On the other hand, downloading software to your desktop is a risk (cf the Solar Winds supply chain attack). I recently got asked to fill in 30 question risk assessment questionaire before someone could upgrade to the latest version of my software (I declined).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#87

Post by eps »

hermitcrab wrote: post #83
eps wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: payments - it depends on the country, but generally Stripe + PayPal + bank wires for larger/enterprise purchases. Alternatively, Braintree. An altogether different option is to pay 2x the commission and use "full-service" reseller frontends like Digital River, PayProGlobal, etc. These are referred to as "registrators" and they used to be useful, because getting a merchant account and processing cards was a royal…

Handling taxes (VAT, sales tax) when you are selling worldwide is a nightmare. That is why many vendors pay the extra to use 'full fat' payment processors, rather than Stripe.

Stripe can handle sales taxes.

Also, it's worth checking with the accountants first before taking on a role of a tax collector. When yet another random country demands a sales tax on purchases made by its citizens, it's just a spherical pony in a vacuum. Best to first check if their demands have merit.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#88

Post by grumpwagon »

iffycan wrote: post #17

I work on a desktop budgeting application. I love that it's desktop-only (and so do the users)! It doesn't earn a living (yet), but it makes more than enough to cover expenses. [0] https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com

I just tried this out this week! It isn't going to work for my needs (I like having payee names to track past expenses), but it looks like great software, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to people.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#89

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

zwieback wrote: post #63

Inside R&D organizations there are plenty of groups building desktop apps for internal use. We have a ton of Forms, WPF and some Qt apps we use for R&D and manufacturing purposes. Also lots of services and other non-GUI stuff. For side-business it'll be a lot tougher than it was when I started 30 years ago.

Same for us in VFX mostly python though.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?

#90

Post by hermitcrab »

eps wrote: post #87
hermitcrab wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handling taxes (VAT, sales tax) when you are selling worldwide is a nightmare. That is why many vendors pay the extra to use 'full fat' payment processors, rather than Stripe.

Stripe can handle sales taxes. Also, it's worth checking with the accountants first before taking on a role of a tax collector. When yet another random country demands a sales tax on purchases made by its citizens, it's just a spherical pony in a vacuum. Best to first check if their demands have merit.

>Stripe can handle sales taxes.

if so, that is a recent development.

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