Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

cycle-gap.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 150 posts

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#71

Post by comedian »

cooldeal wrote: post #54

The bottom 80% of apps split just 3% of the revenue. From http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-the-a... Developer Daniel Markham calls iPhone development “App Store Roulette,” and Andy Finnell of the software studio Fortunate Bear cautions against hoping for App Store success. “You’re betting a lot of this on luck, and the odds are stacked against you," Finnell says. "You’d have better odds playing…

Now that I think about it, Android has 3X (or whatever) the market share of iOS, and no one seems to be making a ton of money from Android (except Google), the future for Android developers is pretty grim if you ask me.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#72

Post by [deleted] »

kellysutton wrote: post #67
quadform wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that [Pandoc]( http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ ) has picked up the Markdown torch. It's got the most-needed additions using the probably least-controversial markup additions. Works great, is fast, well-documented, and is actively-maintained.

Where does it tell me how to write in Pandoc? Hard not to dismiss outright.

[deleted]

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#73

Post by tambourine_man »

gbog wrote: post #61
guywithabike wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah there, Nelly. Gruber said, "When George Lucas was still sane." Don't worry. Your words still have their meaning. All is well.

From the article: "George Lucas (when he was a saint)" Did I miss something?

The guy misheard it and transcribed it wrong. It's when he was sane.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#74

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #8
josephcooney wrote: post #4

I don't want to under-estimate the importance of movable type...but what has Gruber developed? Looking at the list at http://daringfireball.net/projects/ doesn't exactly fill me with shock and awe. I'd imagine with his huge following in the apple community he could put almost anything on the app store and it would sell. Can someone enlighten me? I guess my meta-point is, why am I reading software development career a…

Gruber is a writer who covers Apple stuff first, and a developer only when he has an itch to scratch. Just the same, though, Markdown is a pretty big deal. It's the de facto standard for content markup. I wouldn't call John Gruber a nobody.

[deleted]

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#75

Post by chapel »

cooldeal wrote: post #54

The bottom 80% of apps split just 3% of the revenue. From http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-the-a... Developer Daniel Markham calls iPhone development “App Store Roulette,” and Andy Finnell of the software studio Fortunate Bear cautions against hoping for App Store success. “You’re betting a lot of this on luck, and the odds are stacked against you," Finnell says. "You’d have better odds playing…

The gold rush moniker is really apt when used to describe the app store. Mainly because only a few, very few ended up rich, while most did not. The people that made the most, were the ones providing for the miners, and again, Apple and people making tools for people to make apps are making a killing, while only a few app makers are making anything substantial.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#76

Post by ootachi »

comedian wrote: post #71
cooldeal wrote: post #54

The bottom 80% of apps split just 3% of the revenue. From http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-the-a... Developer Daniel Markham calls iPhone development “App Store Roulette,” and Andy Finnell of the software studio Fortunate Bear cautions against hoping for App Store success. “You’re betting a lot of this on luck, and the odds are stacked against you," Finnell says. "You’d have better odds playing…

Now that I think about it, Android has 3X (or whatever) the market share of iOS, and no one seems to be making a ton of money from Android (except Google), the future for Android developers is pretty grim if you ask me.

10 seconds was all it took to refute your claim: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-m...

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#77

Post by possibilistic »

tikhonj wrote: post #12

This might be true of Apple, but it is definitely true of both the software industry and theoretical CS. The industry is expanding--computers are getting cheaper and more plentiful so we need more and more software. Since we also have more computational power in our hands, we can do more and more interesting things with computers. Theoretical computer science is also in an exciting time--it is a nascent field with ma…

I'm just curious (and hope I don't come off as being ignorant), but what kind of exciting theoretical CS developments have occurred in the last few years? If you can list some really groundbreaking papers that aren't too advanced, I'd love to read them.

Most of the stuff I see in academia is incremental improvement. Not that this should ever be downplayed.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#78

Post by [deleted] »

mdonahoe wrote: post #69
comedian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No wonder you lost all your money. some people like you "hope" while successful people make things happen. Don't blame the system for your failures just because you're not good enough.

Are you an actual comedian? Or is your username your only joke?

[deleted]

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#79

Post by Joeri »

wavephorm wrote: post #63

This sounds like an advertisement to come panning for gold in 1854, years after the gold rush had begun. I think the iTunes app store story is practically over by this point. The app store is long-since saturated with useless gimmicky fart apps, and Apple's force grip on the development process will stifle innovation which is already spilling back into the web via HTML5 and WebGL.

But the gold rush in the mac app store is just beginning. It will be interesting to see whether the mac app store will have a price race to the bottom like te iOS store, or whether prices will remain at 10x the level.

What would be really interesting is microsoft getting in the desktop app store game with windows 8. There's a gigantic potential market, if they manage to unlock it. I doubt they will, but still ... interesting.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#80

Post by cppsnob »

I was sad to see that Gruber couldn't step out of his Apple bubble to tackle this topic (or any topic, ever), so I will:

Everyone who thinks "I should be developing for platform X" is thinking far too small. Take a look around you.. how many of the great companies were formed developing for a particular platform (unless it's their own)? Almost none. In 10 years, do you want to be the old and busted equivalent of the MFC expert whose software was hot in year 2000?

You don't make the Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, of the world by developing just for iOS. Or just for Android. If that's your business plan, tear it up and start over. Because $0.99 a pop doesn't amount to jack-all unless you're Angry Birds. And even they, if they got $1 for each of their 500MM downloads, have still not made as much as Modern Warfare 3 made last week ($738MM in revenue).

Go create a market. Stop being part of Apple's/Google's market for drumming up hardware sales and/or serving ads.

Post reply on HN