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Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

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Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#291

Post by ryandrake »

teeray wrote: post #259
ab8 wrote: post #244

It is interesting to see most people lay the blame at the feet of developers. The reality is that these are all business decisions: 1) Move to the cloud because the business likes the steady payout of subscriptions. Business customers love not having to hire IT teams and demand six 9s of uptime because it is someone else’s responsibility. But performance needs to just be acceptable to end users. 2) Customers refusing…

> Customers refusing to upgrade on-premises software After a certain period of time, that software worked just fine for those customers. Photoshop is a great example. Sure, you won’t get the flashiest features, but CS4 will still work for you on a Win7 machine without any additional fees paid.

Once I commit to buying a version of Software X, I'm happy with it. As a user I expect Software X to work as-installed for decades to come. I don't want new features. I don't want the UX to change on me all of a sudden. I don't want it to get slower. Bugfixes and security fixes are fine, as long as everything else remains the same. I wish more developers understood and respected this.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#293

Post by yen223 »

skydhash wrote: post #290
yen223 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They still raved and raved about that software because it solved an extremely valuable problem for them. A job that took literally a week could now be done in minutes." This is a big point isn't it. We seem to think that customers are choosing "slow" over "fast", when a lot of times they are really choosing between "slow" vs "manual" (i.e. very very slow)

You’d always take a bike instead of walking if you can’t get a car. No one is looking to waste time when they need to get something done. If a tool is the only thing in town, they’ll praise it. Until your competitor came with something better in the way that matter.

I do not doubt that if customers had a choice between "slow" and "fast", all things being equal customers will pick "fast". Customers aren't stupid.

But in a surprising number of cases, either customers don't have that choice (because the market hasn't provided a "fast" solution yet), or all things are not equal (say, the fast solution is fast because it's missing features that are crucial).

And this is why it always looks like customers are content with poorly-performing solutions.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#294

Post by ryandrake »

skydhash wrote: post #215
jwells89 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an overwhelming majority of users aren’t technical enough or well enough versed in UI/UX to be able to put a finger on the frustrations they experience with software, and this is something that’s important to remember when considering complaints coming from a more technically-inclined minority — even if only a small number of techy folks are unhappy, these frustrations likely exist in the larger userbase too…

> I think an overwhelming majority of users aren’t technical enough or well enough versed in UI/UX to be able to put a finger on the frustrations they experience with software They're ok with it because they don't know it could be better. A spinner every 2 minutes? 12 minutes to open slack? They accept it as fact of life until a better software comes in, and now they're wondering why they haven't come across somethin…

Sadly, I think people are starting to accept, as a fact of life, that software gets worse every time a developer touches it. People dread "upgrades" because it's going to get slower, buggier, the UI is going to change unnecessarily, and there's nothing they can do about it besides try to stay on the previous version, which is often impossible with web software.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#295

Post by [deleted] »

dhosek wrote: post #261
varispeed wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One off few hundred or few thousands is nothing in comparison to 30% tax. That said, I don't know about Mac, but you can build apps using free tools - maybe in not as convenient way, but certainly you can. I remember, because I was someone who couldn't afford Visual Studio licence and had to make do with GNU tools. The greed of these companies put me off from developing anything.

In the early 90s, you could expect to pay anywhere from $200–1000 for a good C/C++ compiler. Now it’s free. The 30% tax, as many people have already pointed out, is only if you want to sell through the store. Back in the 90s, if you were selling software, downloading off the net wasn’t really a thing yet and you could easily expect to end up giving up 40–60% of the retail sales price and out of what was left you were…

[deleted]

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#296

Post by rblatz »

ryandrake wrote: post #281
jjnoakes wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I get a project to "actual customers" I don't mind paying and signing my binaries.

How about "actual users" rather than "actual customers?" We should not normalize this because it eats away at free software. It is totally unreasonable to have to pay the operating system's manufacturer in order for person A to simply distribute software to person B, outside of manufacturer's infrastructure. The manufacturer has nothing to do with that distribution, and has no business "warning" the user about this s…

You don’t have to pay to do that on MacOS, they can bypass the warning saying it’s unsigned and that the developer can’t be positively identified.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#298

Post by otteromkram »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #264
mr_toad wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn’t take my kids long to learn how to run unsigned binaries, and neither of them are developers.

Yes, but your kids have a technical parent, so chances are they both have significantly above-average intelligence.

I technically have two parents. How far up the smarts pole am I?

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#299

Post by Aaron2222 »

fragmede wrote: post #235
Aaron2222 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to buy developer accounts The Apple Developer Program is only needed for macOS if you want to do sign your binaries or distribute through the Mac App Store. And you only have to pay Microsoft if you want to publish to the Microsoft Store (or use Visual Studio if you're a company that has more than 5 Visual Studio users, more than 250 computers, or more than $1 Million USD in annual revenue). > buy certificat…

If you don't sign your binaries on macOS, the friction for the user to run your app is prohibitive, outside of developer-focused communities.

Yes, it definitely adds quite a bit of friction. Though my other points about not needing to pay for the Apple Developer Program unless you want to codesign (at a much lower price than what you pay for a codesigning certificate suitable for signing Windows programs) and not having to pay Apple 30% (or 15%, or anything) on macOS still stand.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#300

Post by Aaron2222 »

rblatz wrote: post #296
ryandrake wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about "actual users" rather than "actual customers?" We should not normalize this because it eats away at free software. It is totally unreasonable to have to pay the operating system's manufacturer in order for person A to simply distribute software to person B, outside of manufacturer's infrastructure. The manufacturer has nothing to do with that distribution, and has no business "warning" the user about this s…

You don’t have to pay to do that on MacOS, they can bypass the warning saying it’s unsigned and that the developer can’t be positively identified.

Apple should really provide free codesigning for free/open source software.
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