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Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#11

Post by ilaksh »

moepstar wrote: post #3
reacharavindh wrote: post #2

I made a one time contribution. I hope there are other folks who benefit from such self hosted software that will give him a financial hand.

Same - i dunno if i ever have a use for the project/software, but when he wrote that he doesn't want to "Jimmy Wales" people i just had to :D Also: sometimes, life is just brutal - admitting you actually do need help (and even moreso in such a public way) itself has to be rewarded and commended!

I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#14

Post by mrweasel »

nperez wrote: post #8

Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since…

> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to.

I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bills he taught himself C# and was easily the most talented and creative developer on our team.

Selecting developers based on education is moronic, the self-taught people are often really talented and I can easily find CS majors who can't program at all. Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#15

Post by smabie »

ilaksh wrote: post #11
moepstar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same - i dunno if i ever have a use for the project/software, but when he wrote that he doesn't want to "Jimmy Wales" people i just had to :D Also: sometimes, life is just brutal - admitting you actually do need help (and even moreso in such a public way) itself has to be rewarded and commended!

I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.

There's no ethical obligation to help someone who decided to upload code you can use to the internet.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#16

Post by upmostly »

Can I offer a more pessimistic view?

This is Darwinism.

If the author has a seemingly popular and monetisable (sic) product with real users, yet has failed to achieve the state of ramen profitable, then perhaps this is fate.

Perhaps he's not able to be at the helm of a product that people would rely on in their production apps.

What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down. What happens to the thousands of users who have integrated his product in their stack? An expensive migration. Loss of profit for them.

Perhaps it's better to choose another product that is able to be profitable.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#17

Post by mrweasel »

kramerger wrote: post #9

> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Thanks for making me laugh, I think that's worth a few bucks. I donated every year to Wikipedia until I learned that (1) they have a huge chest of money, (2) their expenses could be much lower if they were not a 500-man SF company.

Yeah, I don't care about the [name redacted], even if it looks like a nice project, but the Wales reference is worth a one time donation.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#19

Post by mrtksn »

upmostly wrote: post #16

Can I offer a more pessimistic view? This is Darwinism. If the author has a seemingly popular and monetisable (sic) product with real users, yet has failed to achieve the state of ramen profitable, then perhaps this is fate. Perhaps he's not able to be at the helm of a product that people would rely on in their production apps. What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to…

>What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down.

That’s why many businesses would not consider a free service or a product. The developer of SQLite sells licenses for his public domain code for this very reason.

Re: Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

#20

Post by sgu999 »

nperez wrote: post #8

Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since…

I've come across so many devs with "good" CVs who were full of themselves and couldn't do a single pragmatic thing. CVs, degrees, titles seem completely inflated and mostly meaningless in North America and in tech in particular. Sometimes I'm wondering whether people like you – assuming you are good at your job – shouldn't simply lie on their CV to get their foot in the door.

Regardless, you should have better chances of not being filtered out with small, profitable, companies.

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