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Users only care about 20% of your application

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Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#61

Post by raincole »

deeringc wrote: post #59
Hendrikto wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> today's mighty 5080 Consumer GPUs really are not where the money is. It’s only a tiny fraction of Nvidia’s revenue, and much lower margin. Datacenter GPUs are where the volume and margins are.

I would have expected that consumer GPUs still have higher volume, but that Datacenter GPUs have much, much higher margin and therefore significantly higher revenue and profit. Is that not the case?

Datacenter GPUs definitely amount to a bigger volumn in 2025[0]. But even when it wasn't the case, Nvidia had been running at a very high margin for years.

[0]: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financia...

Out of $46B about $41B is from datacenter.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#63

Post by jcgl »

chuckadams wrote: post #57
raincole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how well Joel Spolsky's works aged. Some of them ended up proving wrong (like he once predicted that making graphic cards would be a very thin margin business[0]), but most are still true today. Probably truer than when they were written. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v In his defense, by the time 'video chips' were totally different things from today's mighty 5080.

There's a few that have not, like his stance on rewrites. Apparently, if Joel's guru status had been properly respected, Netscape would be a powerhouse today, running on its Navigator codebase, because "The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it." https://www.joelonsoftwar…

I think you're claiming an overly strong interpretation of Joel's stance on rewrites, something like "new code is never better than old code." While that's kind of what your quoted excerpt says, that's not what it means in-context.

In-context, his point is pretty obviously (I think) more like "given a piece of code, it's never better to rewrite." His point is not that newer software can't come along and be better than old software. Rather, all other things being equal, rewriting is an inferior development choice.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#64

Post by einsteinx2 »

Hendrikto wrote: post #52
raincole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how well Joel Spolsky's works aged. Some of them ended up proving wrong (like he once predicted that making graphic cards would be a very thin margin business[0]), but most are still true today. Probably truer than when they were written. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v In his defense, by the time 'video chips' were totally different things from today's mighty 5080.

> today's mighty 5080 Consumer GPUs really are not where the money is. It’s only a tiny fraction of Nvidia’s revenue, and much lower margin. Datacenter GPUs are where the volume and margins are.

You’re not wrong, but Nvidia’s consumer cards also still have pretty massive profit margins all things considered. It’s just they have obscene profit margins in the data center cards that make the consumer cards look small by comparison.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#65

Post by [deleted] »

jcgl wrote: post #63
chuckadams wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few that have not, like his stance on rewrites. Apparently, if Joel's guru status had been properly respected, Netscape would be a powerhouse today, running on its Navigator codebase, because "The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it." https://www.joelonsoftwar…

I think you're claiming an overly strong interpretation of Joel's stance on rewrites, something like "new code is never better than old code." While that's kind of what your quoted excerpt says, that's not what it means in-context. In-context, his point is pretty obviously (I think) more like " given a piece of code , it's never better to rewrite." His point is not that newer software can't come along and be better t…

[deleted]

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#66

Post by ajsnigrutin »

I kinda miss the unix philosophy... one tool for one job. A PDF reader should read PDFs, there's no need for it to have its own (possibly paid) cloud service and an AI chat bot.

I do get why some integrations are beneficial (eg. office software with text editing, spreadsheets and a database, so you can generate eg. letters with data from a database, etc... but every service needing its own cloud and adding a useless AI chatbot is just a useless overkill for me.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#67

Post by atoav »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #41

There's a marketing corollary that is called the Modified Pareto. Briefly that it's not 80/20 but 60/20. That is 20% of the heaviest or power users will consume 60% of the product. But that means the 80% will actually consume 40%. That's no longer small enough to ignore, so you have to cater to the light or infrequent user. https://marketingscience.info/value-paretos-bottom-80/

It is always interesting to view such principles as part of iterative feedback loop rather than the truthism it is:

1. Observation: 80% of users only interact with 40% of the software

2. Conclusion: lets cut part of that 60%, since those are rarely unused features

3. Observation: 80% of users only interact with the 40% of the remaining software

4. Conclusion: lets cut..

You get the idea. In reality the most important thing is that users perceive your software to be able to solve their problems. If you want them to spend money you need to give them the feeling your software could also solve their problems if they came around in a slightly different shape. And those different problems may be covered by the unused features.

If you for example look at 3D software, that bone rigging system may be used by only 2% of users for 1% of the time, but a much higher fraction of users may not even consider your software if it doesn't have that feature in comparison to other software, even if they don't need it yet.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#68

Post by tnolet »

Very true.

But then you start selling to Enterprise and everything changes. Because one missing "hygiene feature"* can tank the the whole deal. And every Enterprise has a different one.

*like a toilet. It needs to be there. You use it 3 minutes per day. If it is not there, the house is uninhabitable.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#69

Post by Sharlin »

deeringc wrote: post #59
Hendrikto wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> today's mighty 5080 Consumer GPUs really are not where the money is. It’s only a tiny fraction of Nvidia’s revenue, and much lower margin. Datacenter GPUs are where the volume and margins are.

I would have expected that consumer GPUs still have higher volume, but that Datacenter GPUs have much, much higher margin and therefore significantly higher revenue and profit. Is that not the case?

If Nvidia made SoC GPUs for mobile devides, then they'd might have higher volume, depending on market share. But gaming and workstation PCs that benefit from a high-performance discrete GPU are a pretty niche market these days, whether laptop or desktop.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#70

Post by bluGill »

chuckadams wrote: post #57
raincole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how well Joel Spolsky's works aged. Some of them ended up proving wrong (like he once predicted that making graphic cards would be a very thin margin business[0]), but most are still true today. Probably truer than when they were written. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v In his defense, by the time 'video chips' were totally different things from today's mighty 5080.

There's a few that have not, like his stance on rewrites. Apparently, if Joel's guru status had been properly respected, Netscape would be a powerhouse today, running on its Navigator codebase, because "The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it." https://www.joelonsoftwar…

Rewrite needs to be seen in context of just fix the old code in place. You are always stoppable and making money, but spend some effort into cleaning up the things you wish you had done differently, enabling tomorrows features, while also have spare "manpower" to use to build new features.

Rewrites often do work out in the long term. However you end up spending 10 years on the rewrite and those are 10 years where the old thing isn't getting as many features (everyone knows it is dead long term so they only invest in the most important features thus allowing your competition time to catch up). Worse those, in 20 years (10 years after the rewrite replaces the old thing) the rewrite is showing age because of things you wish you had done differently.

Which is why I advocate for fixing the old code in place over time. No matter what your best ideas while turn out to be wrong in some way. Architecture decisions that seemed good turn out of have downsides. Languages that go obsolete. APIs everyone uses that you realize should have been done different (If they are only used in one places that is an easy change). Core data structures that no longer meet your needs, but you can't change without touching a million places that update it. You will need a long term effort to fix those mistakes whatever they are. Sure it will take longer to get the old thing to where it needs to be than the rewrite, but you are not saving anything as the new thing will have different mistakes that you will regret in 10 years.

Also the above is in context of a large program. My program to draw names for the family Christmas drawing is easy enough for anyone to write from scratch in an hour so who cares. When your are on a project that costs over 1 billion dollars to write you have different constraints (some of you are on small projects that it is better to write from scratch each time)

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