Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 160 posts

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#111

Post by jeetoid »

Buttons840 wrote: post #84

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…

Such a great observation. I find this broadly applies to every aspect of humanity but especially government, more so than corporations could ever manage. Corporations at least have SOME competitive pressure, much less scope, many more constraints and far less power.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#112

Post by 9rx »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #69
lores wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yes, some stuff scales badly for sure, but for example farming scales hugely! Medieval societies required 80-90% farmers in Western Europe, it's now somewhere around 1-2%.

Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. Also, that 1% to 2% is for grains and other stuff that can be easily harvested with large machines, which is awesome, but the delicate fruits and vegetables and nuts from more tropical places seem to be far above 1% to 2%.

> Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there.

By headcount, but I am not sure that tells the whole story. After all, a retiree who owns farmland, but lets another farmer do the work, can still be legally considered a farmer himself. I suspect even the average farmer working in the fields is spending considerably less time there than he would have in the past.

And that's with most farmers not even using the latest and greatest technology. If we imagine a world where only the highest capacity state-of-the-art machines are put to use, a lot of the farmers would struggle to find any work to do.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#113

Post by phkahler »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #90
phkahler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

> Software is the only industry where the marginal cost of the product is ZERO. The same is true of anything where all the value is in the bytes -- news, film, music, the written word.

>> The same is true of anything where all the value is in the bytes -- news, film, music, the written word.

Good point. I consider those "media or content" to be "played", "read", "watched" whereas software is more a thing to be used - or a set of capabilities added to a physical thing. Video games OTOH are software meant to be played so that occupies both of my mental categories. Stop it! You're making me think! ;-)

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#114

Post by [deleted] »

bathtub365 wrote: post #62
conaclos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems I have with paid solutions is that they generally use open source softwares and don't contribute a dime to them once their paid solutions are generating cash.

As long as they aren’t violating the license they aren’t legally or even socially obligated to fund any of the open source projects they use. If you release software under an open source license that allows free commercial use and redistribution you are explicitly saying you are fine with this. If you don’t want this to happen, use an open source license with more restrictions on commercial use.

[deleted]

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#115

Post by rchaud »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #16
catapart wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music pretty squarely fits that bill. We used to beam it out over the air, now we transmit it through the internet, but everyone has always expected it to be free. And musicians are still expected to make a ton of money off of their music, if a lot of people like it.

I've taken to buying CDs again. I still stream, but for artists I like I at least own the CD and might pick up some merch too because the reality is that only the big artists make a ton of money, or even any money at all.

I am buying CDs too because vinyl keeps getting more expensive. However I do want artists to put more effort into making liner notes booklets.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#116

Post by rvogler »

lolinder wrote: post #48
catapart wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music pretty squarely fits that bill. We used to beam it out over the air, now we transmit it through the internet, but everyone has always expected it to be free. And musicians are still expected to make a ton of money off of their music, if a lot of people like it.

Your last sentence is inaccurate, though: there's a broad understanding that only the absolute top performers will make money on music and everyone else will make an amount that rounds down to nothing. Software stands out in that even the median software developer is making about double the median salary in the market as a whole, all while the products of their efforts are expected to be free.

i think the analogy holds because there is also an established idea of software developers being passionate about what they do and hence create and maintain open source projects for free. never thought about it but music/musician software/developer is pretty isomorphic. also it simply isn't true that software developers make double the median - that's just true for the sv bias here and a few other hot spots.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#117

Post by conaclos »

lolinder wrote: post #76
conaclos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems I have with paid solutions is that they generally use open source softwares and don't contribute a dime to them once their paid solutions are generating cash.

Open Source is just the free-but-profitable trend that OP is talking about taken to the limit. It's software that developers make for free and release for free—most often under a license that requires nothing but attribution. Then a not insignificant portion of those developers feel entitled to be paid for their work, preferably at something north of the median salary in their native country. If you're developing ope…

> If you're developing open source software because you believe in the commons, license it under (A)GPL to ensure the propagation of the commons. If you're developing open source because it looks good on a resume, then you've already been paid for it in reputation. But if you're developing open source because you think you'll get paid for it, I don't know what to tell you except that that is not how the world works.

This is not so simple. Even in the FOSS community, some people are allergic to copyleft licenses. I usually choose a license based on the practice of a community. Also, if you make the choice of copy-left in a world or copy-free is king, you are just isolating yourself from others. Often in big projects, you cannot alone, and the decision of license is a collective one.

I prefer the idea of regulating this mess: enforcing that everyone who has contributed to the success of a project - directly or indirectly - gets paid. It looks more fair and is based on merit - which this society seems to value.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#119

Post by kibwen »

jeetoid wrote: post #111
Buttons840 wrote: post #84

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…

Such a great observation. I find this broadly applies to every aspect of humanity but especially government, more so than corporations could ever manage. Corporations at least have SOME competitive pressure, much less scope, many more constraints and far less power.

Governments are actually less nefarious by this metric because they don't have a perverse incentive to make things worse. If a government wants more money out of you, it just raises taxes. If a corporation wants more money out of you, it needs to induce demand, which at the limit means actively working to make the product worse. Our modern world is proof that relying on competition isn't enough to save us from the enshittification.

Re: Imagine telling 2010 devs that in 2025, collapsing a div would require $8/ month

#120

Post by 9rx »

rvogler wrote: post #116
lolinder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence is inaccurate, though: there's a broad understanding that only the absolute top performers will make money on music and everyone else will make an amount that rounds down to nothing. Software stands out in that even the median software developer is making about double the median salary in the market as a whole, all while the products of their efforts are expected to be free.

i think the analogy holds because there is also an established idea of software developers being passionate about what they do and hence create and maintain open source projects for free. never thought about it but music/musician software/developer is pretty isomorphic. also it simply isn't true that software developers make double the median - that's just true for the sv bias here and a few other hot spots.

> also it simply isn't true that software developers make double the median - that's just true for the sv bias here and a few other hot spots.

On a US national basis it is basically true. Median weekly earnings for full-time workers is $1,192[1]. Median hourly pay for a software developer is $62.58[2], which, assuming a 40 hour week, is $2,503.20.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Post reply on HN