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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?

#281

Post by andris9 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #86
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).

In these cases you could also ask for a 50x price as the “enterprise option”. Filling a compliance form is not just a nuisance, you could take in some liability, so decline it or make sure it’s compensated accordingly.

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

#282

Post by ayewo »

ronyfadel wrote: post #210

I'm currently making between $3k and $4k per month making little utilities for the Mac, e.g.: - Mission Control Plus to enhance macOS' Mission Control: https://fadel.io/missioncontrolplus - Batteries to see your devices' batteries from your Mac: https://fadel.io/batteries

Your Batteries app looks really cool. It’s one of those apps you didn’t know you need until it is shown to you.

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

#283

Post by splittingTimes »

indigodaddy wrote: post #239
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 uncle founded Jenmar, heard of the company and software?

Sorry, no I did not, had to look it up. 30 years in the business is mighty impressive. The competition in the dental market is extrem, so that's a huge success your father build!!

We had a team that also build Lab management software but overtime we painfully became aware that an integrated billing service is a maintenance nightmare with yearly changes to tax laws, the myriad of different health care providers/insurance companies ever changing what treatments they subsidize to which extend on an monthly or even weekly basis. Multiply that with all the different countries we operate in, it became unsustainable.

So again, kudos to your father to prevail in this space.

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

#284

Post by tatami »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #149
bmj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I, too, am a couple of pay raises away from paying someone else to clean me

TBH this is not a pay issue, no matter whether I can afford it.

I would hate that a stranger enters my house to clean, and I would hate it even more when I was not at home.

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

#285

Post by pjmlp »

oneplane wrote: post #182
pjmlp wrote: post #141

Yes, consulting for enterprises doing desktop stuff for laboratory and factory automation is still a thing, specially in air gaped environments. Stuff like this, https://www.biotek.com/ I have done WPF and Windows Forms for companies using such kind of hardware. Qt is the major alternative for these customers. Also note that iPads and Android tablets with plugged monitors are a kind of desktops.

We're doing air gapped development (and even single-machine deployments) with web tech by just also including a server component with the client or on the air gapped network. There is one instance where we still use machine control / HMI non-web, and that's when there is no TCP/IP stack available. Doesn't happen that often anymore.

Sure, Electron is also a thing, and even I was on a project where we made use of Web widgets in 2000.

It seldom comes up though.

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

#286

Post by indigodaddy »

splittingTimes wrote: post #283
indigodaddy wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle founded Jenmar, heard of the company and software?

Sorry, no I did not, had to look it up. 30 years in the business is mighty impressive. The competition in the dental market is extrem, so that's a huge success your father build!! We had a team that also build Lab management software but overtime we painfully became aware that an integrated billing service is a maintenance nightmare with yearly changes to tax laws, the myriad of different health care providers/insura…

Thanks, yeah I think it’s quite a niche business. I don’t think he was the biggest player, but top 3 perhaps. But yeah not a lot of players in that exact category.

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

#288

Post by splittingTimes »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #223
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…

wow. I just had a scan done a few weeks for precisely this sort of thing (drill guide), and I was really impressed by the software. But I was also completely puzzled by what the actual data input (from the wand-like thing) consists of? Any chance you could enlighten me? p.s. the drill guide arrived, the implants go in next week!

So our implant planning software coDiagnostiX actually used DICOM data coming from a CT-scan. You need the full bone/jaw information to make sure that the implant goes into a place where the bone is wide enough, had the right density and that you do not hit a nerve. Those are the clinical requirements. On top of that, the placement must allow for a proper aesthetic restoration design by the lab technician, too.

For the latter you then also need the intra-oral scan. The output of the IO scanner is a simple (but massive) 3D point cloud. The software then is meshing those points on the fly. Using the color information from the IO scanners camera, shaders are added to generate the right texture for teeth, gingiva, etc.

We have a module in the CAD Software that allows to Integrate the surgical and prosthetic workflows through real-time case data sharing between coDiagnostiX and DWOS CAD. The Real-time (or asynchronous) connectivity between lab technicians and implant-placing dentists enables better prosthetically-driven implant planning and immediate provisional design.

On a personal note, don't be afraid of the procedure. With those drill guides and today's planning solutions we made leaps in implantology. In the beginning the surgeons did it by hand and feeling. I shudder at the thought.

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

#289

Post by throw8932894 »

727564797069706 wrote: post #75
throw8932894 wrote: post #38

I do. Data management and visualisation for local data store. This stuff is private and can not really go into cloud. Was using Java Swing until very recently. Switched to Kotlin JS in browser, not sure it can count as desktop anymore.

How have your experiences with Kotlin JS been? I've been considering it for similar type of desktop app development, but haven't dug deeper yet. Mainly because I already have some experience with Rust and have been considering options in this space before venturing elsewhere.

It is good if you want to avoid javascript, it is programming on web, but with solid Java tooling. My main point is to have the same language on front and backend.

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

#290

Post by splittingTimes »

derekja wrote: post #193
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…

neat! I recently had my teeth scanned for a night orthotic and decided that I needed a 3D print of my teeth. It was challenging walking the office staff how to get me the STL but once I did they were amazed when I walked in with a print of my teeth! (I don't really know why they were amazed, I mean, that's what the equipment was purchased to do was make scans of teeth. But their reaction was noteworthy!)

Yeah. 3D printers still have not entered the industry to their full extend. It's mostly dental labs that use them. Here again you need the right materials and precision to use them as physical control models when doing the aesthetic restoration and planning. It is still very common that dentists take an impression (very you bite that gummy mass). It gets sent to the labs. The labs then create a plaster model from that to have a physical control model. They also use one of the above mentioned desktop 3D scanners to create the digital model used in the CAD application.
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