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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?

#341

Post by eviks »

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…

> and the cost can’t be that prohibitive since I don’t remember the last time I ended up with an unsigned binary on my Mac, even for free software like TeX and friends or Aquamacs.

Ok, so your app tastes aren't that varied then (or maybe it's the memory), plenty of devs of various little utilities don't bother paying

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

#342

Post by edanm »

ryandrake wrote: post #291
teeray wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This attitude is why the web won, IMO.

When it comes to native apps, in the 2000s, this was the common attitude of users. But it's much harder to implement from a business perspective! Both in terms of business models, and in terms of dev time - having a bunch of possibly-incompatible versions lying around is a lot of overhead.

On the web, where most technical users understood this is technically impossible, they were willing to allow businesses to act differently, keep the software always-updated, and charge per usage. And since that's much easier and more lucrative for companies, they all switched to that.

(Now everyone kind of accepts that model, which is why today's Photoshop works via subscription, but the "damage" was done and the web won.)

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

#343

Post by bdw5204 »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #330
bdw5204 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that was changed by South Dakota v. Wayfair[0]. Most states seem to only require you collect the tax if you have 200 shipments into the state or $100k in revenue because going after a small time out of state e-commerce business over a few dollars of tax probably wouldn't be worth it but a large firm in Delaware refusing to collect tax on shipments into California would probably be hearing from Califor…

> Every company selling goods and services to European customers needs to collect value-added tax (VAT), even if their business is not established in Europe. https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-eu-vat-and-vat-oss

> Enforcement of judgments issued by foreign courts in the United States is governed by the laws of the states. Enforcement cannot be accomplished by means of letters rogatory in the United States. Under U.S. law, an individual seeking to enforce a foreign judgment, decree or order in this country must file suit before a competent court. The court will determine whether to recognize and enforce the foreign judgment.

Obviously, its not a good idea to bet your business on the courts not enforcing an EU fine when you can just add the VAT and cost of the handling hassle to the price for EU customers.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...

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

#344

Post by edanm »

ornornor wrote: post #334
shpx wrote: post #314

Web apps are much faster to install and update. 1) Your browser is always open, whereas you need to close your current app and open the app store app 2) Google Search is better at giving you what you want in the fewest number of keystrokes than any search from any other company including app store search boxes 3) installing a "web app" is one click after the google search results or if someone posts a link. As you mi…

> 2) Google Search is better at giving you what you want in the fewest number of keystrokes than any search from any other company including app store search boxes That seems to be contrary to the general opinion (at least on HN): google has become utterly irrelevant, serving mostly content farm AI generated junk type of blogspam, and google is more concerned about ad revenue than anything else (including results qua…

I mean, this is a very HN-bubble thought. Even if people here actually think that, just look at Google's revenue or usage numbers. Clearly a "few" people are still using it!

People here might say that Google has gotten terrible, but I would bet 99% of HNers still user Google dozens of times a day, just like everybody else in the world.

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

#345

Post by eviks »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #329
d357r0y3r wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% cut for handling taxes? That's wild.

You'd think so until you look into doing it yourself. It's more work than building a simple app.

And you'd thinking would reverse again to the common sense baseline when you realize that alternative providers outside of locked systems don't charge 30%

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

#346

Post by guappa »

Rochus wrote: post #134
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

[flagged]

In several countries you can't file your taxes or access your bank without a google/apple smartphone. People need to live too.

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

#347

Post by guappa »

Veserv wrote: post #162
injuly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt licensing is its own mess. For commercial software, the pricing is 350-500$ per developer, per month. Seriously [1]. The company that now owns the framework doesn't seem to acknowledge the gap between big enterprises and solo developers/smaller teams. [1] Yes, one can use Qt for commercial software without buying a license (as long as it is dynamically linked), but their marketing does everything it can to hide th…

That is 4,200-6,000 $/yr. In the US, a junior developer in a software company costs (all-inclusive, not just salary) around 150,000-200,000 $/yr. That is 2-4% of yearly cost on tooling. That is not very much. It might not be worth the price, but that is hardly ridiculous. It is quite believable to get a 4% productivity improvement from appropriate tooling. You need to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the answe…

No they'd rather spend weeks to reimplement scrolling.

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

#348

Post by sobellian »

StressedDev wrote: post #325
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

To be blunt, you do not have to create a developer account, sign binaries, or share 30% of your revenue with Microsoft. MS's API are not a mess in my opinion. You do have several options (traditional Win32, .NET, UWP, etc.). These options all work fairly well and are very flexible. As for, Apple, I do not know but I suspect you can make Mac applications without a developer account. You need a developer account for iP…

If you don't sign your Windows installer, then the first N users to use it will get a scary pop-up message saying that the AV "protected your PC." I think you might also need do code-signing if you distribute through the MS store.

Compare with the web where LetsEncrypt just works without demanding a king's ransom.

As for the APIs, it is very easy to get into dependency hell between all the different UI technologies, .NET implementations, and target systems. Want to develop a brand new plain-old GUI app? Probably simple (although I've never tried, the web is right there). Need to develop a plugin for an existing application, or a new app for something like Hololens? Have fun.

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

#349

Post by anonzzzies »

flenserboy wrote: post #213
alerighi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that makes me crazy is that the thing that we do on computers are basically the same each year, yet software are more and more heavy. For example just in 2010 a Linux distribution with a DE just started did consume 100Mb of RAM, an optimized version 60Mb of RAM. I remember it perfectly. I had 2Gb of RAM and did not have even a swap partition. Now just a decade later, a computer with less than 8Gb of RAM is…

Think also about all the finished stand-alone applications which have been discarded because of replacement APIs, or because they were written in assembly. We had near-perfect (limited feature-wise from a 3-decade view, of course) word processors, spreadsheets, and single-user databases in the late 80s/early 90s which were, except for many specific use-case additions, complete & only in need of regular maintenance &…

> limited feature-wise from a 3-decade view

Outside gaming, ai and big data, aka things for instance my parents don’t use at all, what limited feature wise? Browsers, sure, however my father prefers Teletext and newsgroups and Viditel (doesn’t exist anymore but he mentions it quite a lot) over ad infested slow as pudding websites. Email didn’t change since the 90s, word processors changed but not with stuff most people use (I still miss WP; it was just better imho; I went over to Latex because I find Word a complete horror show and that didn’t change), spreadsheets are used by pros and amateurs alike as a database mostly for making lists; nothing new there. You can go on and on; put an average user behind a 80s/90s pc (arguably after win95 release; DOS was an issue for many and 3.1 was horrible; or Mac OS) and they will barely notice the difference. Except for the above list of ai, big data, gaming and most importantly, browsers. Ai is mostly an api so that can be fixed (I saw a c64 openai chat somewhere) , big data is a very small % of humanity using that and gaming, well, depends what you like. I personally hate 3d games; I like 80s shmups and most people who game are on mobile playing cwazy diamonds or whatnot which I can implement on an msx 8 bit machine from the early 80s. Of course the massive multiplayer open world 3d stuff doesn’t work.

Anyway; as I said before here responding to what software/hardware to use for their parents; whenever someone asks me to revive their computer, I install Debian with i3 wm and dillo and ff as browser, Libreoffice and thunderbird. It takes a few hours to get used to but people (who are not in IT or any other computer fahig job) are flabbergasted by the speed, low latency and battery life. I did an x220 (with 9 cell) install last week; from win xp to the above setup; battery life jumped from 3 to 12 hours and everything is fast.

I install about 50 of those for people in my town throughout the year; people think they depend on certain software, but they really usually don’t. If they do, most things people ask for now work quite well under Wine. I have a simple script which starts an easy ‘Home Screen’ on i3 with massive buttons of their favourite apps which open on another screen (1 full screen per screen); people keep asking why Microsoft doesn’t do that instead of those annoying windows…

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

#350

Post by VelesDude »

alerighi wrote: post #64
stephc_int13 wrote: post #20

My opinion about this is that yes, we lost our way, and the reason is very simple, it is because we could. It was the path of least resistance, so we took it. Software has been freeriding on hardware improvements for a few decades, especially on web and desktop apps. Moore's law has been a blessing and a curse. The software you use today was written by people who learned their craft while this free-ride was still ful…

The thing that makes me crazy is that the thing that we do on computers are basically the same each year, yet software are more and more heavy. For example just in 2010 a Linux distribution with a DE just started did consume 100Mb of RAM, an optimized version 60Mb of RAM. I remember it perfectly. I had 2Gb of RAM and did not have even a swap partition. Now just a decade later, a computer with less than 8Gb of RAM is…

My daily runner is a T400 Laptop with 4GB RAM on a fairly slim Linux distro. But in the last 6-12 months it is starting to feel a little tight when it comes to anything web browsing. Even things like Thunderbird are getting very bulky in keeping up with web rendering standards.

I pulled down an Audiobook player the other day, once all dependencies were meet, it need 1.3GB to function! At least VLC is still slim.

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