A world where people pay for software • Hacker News Board

Re: A world where people pay for software

#291

Post by therealdrag0 » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

cscheid wrote: post #132

gizmo wrote: post #21

Software has no marginal cost. You can make something that's used by untold millions of people. Even if many people pirate enough people won't for you to recoup your development cost and then some. Software is easier to produce, sell, and distribute than any physical product. You don't have to worry about warehouses filled with unsold inventory. You don't have to worry about quality control and returns. It still blow…

> Software has no marginal cost. Maybe you've never experienced the difference between writing software for 1000 people and writing software for 1M people, or (I imagine) 1B. The marginal per-person cost of software is not on shipping. It's on "what kind of weird shit will I now have to do because 1M is a lot of chances for my software to break weirdly, and people have paid for it" > You don't have to worry about qua…

I suspect it’s less about chances to break due to dice rolls and more chances to not meet the feature/requirements that change based on varying contexts of users, which create a lot of legal and integration and reqs which require lots of code and maintenance.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#292

Post by chromoblob » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:46 PM UTC

ChadNauseam wrote: post #277

chromoblob wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The choice is between letting hardware be not finalized and letting that force software to be non-finalizable, and letting software be finalizable and forcing the hardware to be finalized too. I like latter more. Finalized hardware is better by itself as well.

We would all like bug-free hardware, but we won't get it and our job is to write good software in the environment we were given

> we won't get it

Why do you think so?

Re: A world where people pay for software

#293

Post by jhbadger » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #162

ryandrake wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least it must be patched up with newly discovered security threats. I'd say at the very most it needs security updates. Too much software changes just to change. UI redesigns for the sake of redesign, cramming features that nobody wants so a product owner can get promoted, adding telemetry and analytics to chase metrics that no user cares about, adding annoying notifications and popups to juice "engagem…

On the other hand, the reality experienced by software companies is that adding features is profitable. Joel Spolsky talks about this in one of his old blog posts[1]: "I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features." It makes sense though, if software companies could make just as much money doing less work, they certainly would…

I think this is kind of disproven by a feature that was added to Microsoft Word in the 1990s (I don't think it is still around, although I may be mistaken). It was called "WordArt" and let the user do things like write the word "shark" with the letters deformed so it looked like a picture of a shark. Why would you want to do this? I have no idea. It's just obvious that the people working on Microsoft Word needed to add something and just bug fixes weren't enough, I guess (although they still don't have a reference management system which is why things like EndNote still exist)

Re: A world where people pay for software

#294

Post by scarface_74 » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

Frafabowa wrote: post #274

swiftcoder wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you get ongoing revenue by selling new versions This works exactly up until the moment that your software is good enough that most of your userbase stops paying to upgrade. Then you are dead in the water, and the software becomes abandonned by design.

Obviously that's bad for businesses - but it's great for consumers! I think the question that's being asked is if there's some business model out there that delivers what customers want (the ability to just buy a finished product once and have it work decades down the line, like "pass it down to your kids" long) while also delivering profits to shareholders. There's a reason farmers want the ability to repair their o…

How is it good for consumers to have abandoned software that is not compatible and never will be compatible with newer operating systems?

Two decades ago, for instance Apple was still selling PPC based Macs.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#295

Post by cscheid » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

chromoblob wrote: post #261

cscheid wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet that's what every good engineer did when Spectre came out. Same with the Pentium fdiv bugs, and same with a host of microcode bugs that come up all the time. Not my business to decide what you think is reasonable. That's just what happens in the world, and what (in my view) good engineers sign up for.

The choice is between letting hardware be not finalized and letting that force software to be non-finalizable, and letting software be finalizable and forcing the hardware to be finalized too. I like latter more. Finalized hardware is better by itself as well.

> The choice

What choice? I have to fix bugs today as they come.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#296

Post by pmcp » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #293

SoftTalker wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the reality experienced by software companies is that adding features is profitable. Joel Spolsky talks about this in one of his old blog posts[1]: "I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features." It makes sense though, if software companies could make just as much money doing less work, they certainly would…

I think this is kind of disproven by a feature that was added to Microsoft Word in the 1990s (I don't think it is still around, although I may be mistaken). It was called "WordArt" and let the user do things like write the word "shark" with the letters deformed so it looked like a picture of a shark. Why would you want to do this? I have no idea. It's just obvious that the people working on Microsoft Word needed to a…

I wonder if you are trolling or being serieus, because me and literally everyone i know would use this feature extensively. For powerpoints, school presentations, birthday cards. 50% of the time I fired up Word, it would be for that feature.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#297

Post by throwbadubadu » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #178

ryandrake wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least it must be patched up with newly discovered security threats. I'd say at the very most it needs security updates. Too much software changes just to change. UI redesigns for the sake of redesign, cramming features that nobody wants so a product owner can get promoted, adding telemetry and analytics to chase metrics that no user cares about, adding annoying notifications and popups to juice "engagem…

So, this is true: > Too much software changes just to change. But it doesn't imply this: > I'd say at the very most it needs security updates. What the parent said about "security updates at the very least" is correct, and sometimes that happens to also be the very most updates that should be made. And sometimes it's that but a little bit more . And sometimes it's that and a lot more . The hard part is figuring out t…

> "security updates at the very least" is correct, and sometimes that happens to also be the very most updates that should be made.

And a lot of those updates wouldn't be necessary of software and tools wouldn't offer so much attack surfaces, that they wouldn't need if they cared less about those things as necessary features...

Re: A world where people pay for software

#298

Post by themadturk » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #231

vishnugupta wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, this is what all the business books, MBAs have been saying since 60s. However, since then we have come to learn a lot about software. The most important of which is that software, just like physical products, needs maintenance. The world is constantly changing and evolving, and software has to keep up otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. At the very least it must be patched up with ne…

> The world is constantly changing and evolving, and software has to keep up otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. There's some truth to this, but I think this factor is usually dramatically overstated. At least, most of the software I use doesn't need to constantly change. The majority of software updates I see are unnecessary, and many of them are undesirable.

A company I worked for 12 years ago was using a version of Microsoft Navision (now Microsoft Dynamics or something). They hadn't upgraded for several years. Upgrading would have meant a bunch of workstations would have needed to use newer versions of Windows beyond XP. Navision was largely unsupported (only by a consultant, not by MS) and of course the workstations were dangerously behind (yes, we were definitely on the internet). But to the users and the owner of the company, everything was working. We had very few problems...EDI was coming in and going out, packages were packed and shipped, inventory and accounting were up to date. It felt to me like things were held together with chewing gum and duct tape, and we were one hard drive failure from disaster, but from the company's bottom line, nothing was broken.

I left before they upgraded anything, and they're still in business, so I guess it worked out. But it proves that not everything has to change to continue to work.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#299

Post by _fizz_buzz_ » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #112

gizmo wrote: post #21

Software has no marginal cost. You can make something that's used by untold millions of people. Even if many people pirate enough people won't for you to recoup your development cost and then some. Software is easier to produce, sell, and distribute than any physical product. You don't have to worry about warehouses filled with unsold inventory. You don't have to worry about quality control and returns. It still blow…

I mean, sure, this is what all the business books, MBAs have been saying since 60s. However, since then we have come to learn a lot about software. The most important of which is that software, just like physical products, needs maintenance. The world is constantly changing and evolving, and software has to keep up otherwise it'll become obsolete within couple of years. At the very least it must be patched up with ne…

We build power electronics and our machines also have lots of software in them. People that only work in software have no idea what a difference a software bug is compared to a hardware bug. Things we can solve in software means someone remotes into the machine and goes home to their family at the end of the day. Hardware problems usually means the engineer goes home packs a bag, gets a plane ticket, is away from the family for a week and hopefully we figured out remotely, correctly what the real issue is. I did two transatlantic flights this year because there was an issue with a >$5 component on a circuit board.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#300

Post by jhbadger » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

pmcp wrote: post #296

jhbadger wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is kind of disproven by a feature that was added to Microsoft Word in the 1990s (I don't think it is still around, although I may be mistaken). It was called "WordArt" and let the user do things like write the word "shark" with the letters deformed so it looked like a picture of a shark. Why would you want to do this? I have no idea. It's just obvious that the people working on Microsoft Word needed to a…

I wonder if you are trolling or being serieus, because me and literally everyone i know would use this feature extensively. For powerpoints, school presentations, birthday cards. 50% of the time I fired up Word, it would be for that feature.

I seriously have never seen this used ever. But it sounds like you are talking about children using it, which I hadn't considered (I was already an adult in the 1990s).