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If you are a dev on a JavaScript/CSS development website and can't figure out how to script this yourself, you deserve to pay extra.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Hitchiker's Guide already had a rant about useless jobs like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers. While I don't necessarily agree with hairdressers being useless, I feel like much of the economy is selling stuff no one really needs to solve problems no one really has in order to justify one's employment, and that share is increasing as automation scales the useful things with proportionately less effort. That's…
No one needs hairdressers? How do you figure?
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
> Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. Shoppers expect shopping carts at a supermarket to be free, but you still have for-profit factories that employ many people to produce shopping carts that they sell for-profit to supermarkets. Do you also struggle to understand how that works?
But so often in my career and in general, I have seen the most successful companies doing extra work to make their product worse. It's both obvious and subtle how bad this is; if the people who implemented this feature had instead spent their time doing nothing, it would have improved the product.
"Competition is fierce, so let's spend time and money making our product worse"--is this the winning strategy from the company at the forefront of technology? Apparently. This is a testament to the health of our free markets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software is very scalable and can provide a lot of value. If you look at the revenue per SWE for Microsoft, Alphabet, Netflix, etc, then it's hard to compare them to the person whose job isn't scalable, to say a truck driver, nurse, or bartender.
So I agree with this but I think it distorts the true value. A nurse is worth way more to society than another SWE but the SWE gets paid way more. Bankers get paid a lot because they control money supply but I don’t think most people believe bankers are helping them or wish we had more bankers. Software is going down a similar path (see artist outrage over AI) because the pull of money is too great.
The site in question seems unusable if you visit it on mobile (iPhone/Safari): https://jsfiddle.net It could at least show a “designed for desktop use only” message or something.
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
People programming for fun has always skewed its worth in the eye of some, and we also get the old “doing it for the exposure” expectations that is endemic in all creative realms.
But something as simple as the minimal code needed for this particular feature, which is essentially a QoL UX feature, is something that I think should be standard if present, not an added extra charge on top of what is already being paid (this isn't a free service, payment is through letting them sell you to there stalky ad-tech partners). It definitely feels like very deliberate price gouging.
Sometimes I hear people say that to succeed in our economy you need to offer the best product for the lowest price--or rather, the right balance between the two. But so often in my career and in general, I have seen the most successful companies doing extra work to make their product worse. It's both obvious and subtle how bad this is; if the people who implemented this feature had instead spent their time doing noth…
no, it's not. it's a statement that applies to a monopoly. And software is a monopoly - because each piece of software is unique enough, that there's no replacement possible.
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
>> Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way. Software is the only industry where the marginal cost of the product is ZERO. All software you use has already been developed, you are presumably paying for updat…
The same is true of anything where all the value is in the bytes -- news, film, music, the written word.