Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications? • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by tasogare » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:18 AM UTC

jslaby wrote: post #258

grujicd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAUI doesn't seem to have Linux support for now. There are some community efforts but nothing here yet. That pretty much kills multiplatform aspect. At least for category of server management tools where my product belongs. Ok, Win + Mac is better than Win only, but if I have to redo entire app it should better support Linux as well. Also, it's hard to bet on a new MS GUI framework, when they released and abandoned s…

I built an app on Silverlight that I sold for Windows and Mac and was making pretty decent money, until MS ended support. I looked into QT as a replacement, but couldn't get a replacement app finished in time. I will never trust MS multi-platform gui again.

Yeah dropping Silverlight support for Mac was a shame, Microsoft finally had a good multiplatform story. They could have keep the out-of-browser mode and market it as desktop dev framework instead of browser plugin.

The biggest irony is that this tech would have allowed them to open a store on Windows 7, 10 and Mac which could have been way more popular due to market share than both the Windows and Mac app stores.

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

#262

Post by tasogare » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #155

MangoCoffee wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what Microsoft fat client technology are you using? the current problem for me with Microsoft fat client is there are too much options and no clear one that Microsoft will support long term.

Yea, I develop a hobby project targeting desktop Mac (Objective C GUI, C++ business logic) and I’m not sure what Windows technology I should use should I ever decide to port to Windows. There are so many and they are all in various stages of unsupported. C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? Maybe just give up on trying to read the future and use Qt. Fucking madness!

C# on .net 6.0 with either WinForms or WPF.

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

#263

Post by nocommandline » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

https://nocommandline.com is a GUI for Google App Engine. It’s an electron App and is currently only available for Mac and Windows. I later added a GUI for Datastore Emulator to the App and am slowly adding other features and fixing bugs.

I’m not making enough to quit my 9-5 job but I didn’t build the App with that in mind. Built it because I needed to scratch my own itch and figured others might find it useful too.

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

#264

Post by COGlory » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:37 AM UTC

splittingTimes wrote: post #102

Our company sells HW and SW for the dental sector. We have a desktop app that processes DICOM data to do implant treatment planning (where to place an implant in the patient jaw). Output is a STL file to print a drill guide for the oral surgeon to perform a guided surgery. Our desktop scanners for dental labs and our intra-oral scanners for dentists generate 3D meshes of the patients oral situation. Those meshes are…

My father is a dental technician and has a Dental Wings scanner. What a small world.

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

#265

Post by wnolens » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #184

I started a company that built, I believe, the most advanced no-code data automation desktop application ( https://easymorph.com ). It's entirely bootstrapped, profitable and pays salaries to 10+ people (and we keep hiring). Many our customers specifically looked for an on-prem solution as they don't want to deal with SaaS and its privacy issues and use-based pricing. With an on-prem tool like ours they get unlimited…

> It's entirely bootstrapped, profitable and pays salaries to 10+ people (and we keep hiring).

Congrats. That's the dream (to me). Bootstrap and create a handful of jobs.

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

#266

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

jspann wrote: post #260

cc101 wrote: post #257

I'm glad someone is making money. I'm not. I spent 5 years writing a unified workflow for folks writing a research paper/thesis/dissertation (Epiphany Workflow, Apple's App Store). It begins with collecting ideas from websites and files, moves the ideas into an outliner, then supports organizing relevant ideas according to a report outline, and finally, supports reviewing relevant ideas while the user writes each sec…

First off, congrats on getting your idea out into a tangible product. Many people come up with ideas, even fewer take time, or have the skills, to try to actually build them, but you put in time and effort that made it to the end goal of putting it on the App Store. Not everyone makes it that far so congratulations on doing so. I took a look because, as a current student, I often have to write research papers and tag…

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by COGlory » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

cc101 wrote: post #257

I'm glad someone is making money. I'm not. I spent 5 years writing a unified workflow for folks writing a research paper/thesis/dissertation (Epiphany Workflow, Apple's App Store). It begins with collecting ideas from websites and files, moves the ideas into an outliner, then supports organizing relevant ideas according to a report outline, and finally, supports reviewing relevant ideas while the user writes each sec…

This looks really cool. I'm not the target audience (no mac) but definitely don't give up yet.

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

#268

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

semireg wrote: post #124

chrisandchris wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks quite cool. Sadly no Linux support, but I get why (got to build a printing library for Brother p-touch once). However, I was about 5 minutes on your site and could not find a list of compatible printers. Where did you hide it :) ?

Sorry, it's right here: https://label.live/printers

It's really hard to find on an otherwise lovely site. I had the same issue as the poster above you.

Maybe you could have a list of recommended printers too?

Looks like a great app though - I have a forthcoming need to print a lot of inventory labels and I think your app would be great for that.

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

#269

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #247

nightski wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this every day with YNAB (even though they have a mobile app). Takes about 5 minutes. So much easier on a computer than on a tiny phone.

I use Google sheets for my budget - from my phone. I can’t remember the last time I actually used my personal computer for anything. I use my work computer for work and my phone or iPad for everything else. What am I suppose to use when I’m out and about or traveling? I was on vacation when I got paid in December. The only thing I had on me was my phone.

[deleted]

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

#270

Post by foepys » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:58 AM UTC

idiocrat wrote: post #240

grujicd wrote: post #116

I'm making Windows/.Net based app for managing queues - QueueExplorer. Started with MSMQ support back in 2005, now it supports Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ. It's old fashioned perpetual licensing, so revenue is a rollercoaster. Because of that, it's emotional rollercoaster as well. Good thing is you get paid for full license at the time of purchase instead of collecting it in 10-20 months. Bad thing is ev…

I am looking forward for the upcoming release of WiseJ 3. WiseJ is a drop-in replacement for WinForms apps, to make those run in a browser. The WiseJ 2.5 is yet on .NET 4.8, but the new WiseJ 3, planned for March, is running on .NET Core. The key features for me are: (1) all the wiring is hidden, so no need do not deal with Javascript. All processing is done in server. (2) Refreshing the browser by pressing F5 keeps…

> It is a paid library, but very reasonable price.

That's not a bad thing. My company pays quite a bit of money for various libraries and if we notice a bug in any of them, we report it and it's usually fixed within 4-6 weeks in a new release.

There is no discussion with 5 people chiming in and you don't need to follow up constantly. Report it once, answer maybe one or two questions on how to reproduce it, and even very complex bugs will be gone.

I know that there are a lot of well maintained free projects but being able to write a report and to be guaranteed an answer back on the very next day is very calming when you have customers waiting.