It's hard to believe not only that this is 17 years old, but that I remember when he posted it!
I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
71–80 of 211 posts
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#72Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…
To be fair, probably most of us here on HN write software to put food on the table. Don’t pooh-pooh our careers.
He didn't pooh-pooh anyone's careers.
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#73I wonder what the numbers say about desktop applications now, and how much the arrival of Electron changed things up here. Nowadays, it seems to be that mobile apps have the "best metrics" for b2c software. I'd be interested to read a contemporary version of this article.
“Metrics” This reminds me of a past job working for an e-commerce company. This wasn’t a store like Amazon that “everyone” uses weekly, it was a specific pricey fashion brand. They had put out a shitty iOS app, which was just a very bare-bones wrapper around the website. But they raved about how much better the conversion rate rates were there. Nobody would listen to me about how the customers that bother downloading…
Hey, I notice this kind of thing all the time. People use "data" to tell the story they want to -- similar to how it seems humans make a decision subconsciously then weave a rational decision to back it up afterwards.
Do you have principles on how to tackle this? I feel stuck between the irrationality of anecdata and the irrationality of lying with numbers. As if the only useful statistic is one I collect and calculate myself. And, even then, I could be lying to myself.
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#74Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#75I wonder what the numbers say about desktop applications now, and how much the arrival of Electron changed things up here. Nowadays, it seems to be that mobile apps have the "best metrics" for b2c software. I'd be interested to read a contemporary version of this article.
“Metrics” This reminds me of a past job working for an e-commerce company. This wasn’t a store like Amazon that “everyone” uses weekly, it was a specific pricey fashion brand. They had put out a shitty iOS app, which was just a very bare-bones wrapper around the website. But they raved about how much better the conversion rate rates were there. Nobody would listen to me about how the customers that bother downloading…
This stupidity might go a long way towards explaining the relentless push towards apps.
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#76The author (who is a frequent commenter here) started a company called Appointment Reminder after writing this, which for years was my favorite example of an independent small company that identified a niche, served it well, and then went on to be acquired.
There's an interview with him on the subject that is sadly behind a paywall now: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-grew-my-appointment-...
The world has changed a lot since then. The days where 37 Signals could build an empire out of simple web form apps and individuals could build and sell a SaaS that sends reminder texts are long gone. Most of the low hanging fruit was mined out long ago and most simple services have seen 100 different startups try to serve them already.
As much as Appointment Reminder was my prime example of a successful indie SaaS, the author's second startup has (with all due respect) become one of my prime examples of not validating product-market fit before building your product. They went on to build Starfighter, a company that was supposed to be a candidate vetting platform where people could do complex coding challenges and then get matched up with companies wanting to hire people. It was built partially in the open through their newsletter and in Hacker News posts.
If you thought doing LeetCode problems to get interviews was annoying, imagine having to spend hours or days going through a CTF where you hack multi-core CPUs to do something complex with a simulated stock market. I can't even remember the entire premise, but every time I read something about the company it was getting more and more complex. At the same time I was on other forums where candidates were going the opposite direction: becoming frustrated with the proliferation of coding interviews and refusing to do interview challenges that would take hours of their time.
I remember through the entire process thinking that it seemed like a questionable business plan that wouldn't really appeal to companies or to candidates. Even the Hacker News comments were full of (surprisingly polite) feedback saying that investing a lot of hours into solving programming puzzles to maybe get some recruiter interest wasn't appealing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10480390
Some amazing foreshadowing in that thread from one of the co-founders (not Patrick McKenzie):
> I literally lack the ability to form coherent sentences about our business that don't somehow involve how to render a graph of AVR basic blocks in a React web app, is how little we're thinking about how the game interacts with recruiting right now.
> We are going to get the CTF right, and then work from there to a sustainable recruiting business. We should have done it the other way around, but we didn't. :)
As you might have guessed, it didn't work out at all. It was weird for me to follow one of my indie startup heroes on their journey into their second business that skipped all of the normal startup advice and then reached the exact conclusion that advice was warning against.
It was enlightening to follow along and I'm glad they tried something different and shared it along the way, but watching it happen was a turning point for me in how I approach advice from any one individual author, blogger, writer, or influencer.
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#77We should do more of this, hacker news, surface 17 year old articles and then debate like they were written yesterday!
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
its just waaaaaay easier to distribute a web app For some things a desktop app is required (more system access) or offers some competitive UX advantage (although this reason is shrinking all the time). Short of that user's are going to choose web 95% of the time.
This points to our failure as an industry to design a universal app engine that isn't a browser.
We have failed to design a universal app engine…except for the one that dwarfs every other kind of software development for every kind of device in the world.
Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#79Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This points to our failure as an industry to design a universal app engine that isn't a browser.
Remember Flash? The big tech companies felt a threat to their walled gardens. They formed an unholy alliance to stamp out flash with a sprinkle of fake news labeling it a security threat. Remember Livescript and early web browsers? It was almost cancelled by big tech because Java was supposed to be the cross platform system. The web and Javascript just BARELY escaped a big tech smack down. They stroked the ego of big…
Flash had quite a lot of quite severe CVE; how many of those do you suppose are "fake news" connived by conspiracy (paranoid style in politics, much?) as opposed to Flash being a pile of rusted dongs as far as security goes? A lot of software from that era was a pile of rusted dongs, bloat browsers included. Flash was also the first broken website I ever came across, for some restaurant I never ended up going to. If they can't show their menu in text, oh, well.