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

81–90 of 150 posts

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#81

Post by tjogin »

cppsnob wrote: post #80

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…

Why would he step out of the Apple bubble? His crowd were Apple developers, that's the one thing they have in common.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#82

Post by sixtofour »

ootachi wrote: post #76
comedian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Ah. I'm going to get my son up early tomorrow, talk him out of college and in to Android development. Or basketball star, I'm not sure which.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#83

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#84

Post by mqqq »

sixtofour wrote: post #82
ootachi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah. I'm going to get my son up early tomorrow, talk him out of college and in to Android development. Or basketball star, I'm not sure which.

College is still useful. Basketball is a real longshot.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#85

Post by felipemnoa »

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…

It is the same with other industries: Music, Movies, Theater, etc. Nothing is for sure. Not sure why we are singling the AppStore. There have been $100 million (USA) movies that have flopped. Most ventures will flop and only a few will take all the revenue/income in any industry.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#86

Post by pacomerh »

cppsnob wrote: post #80

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…

I absolutely agree, I think Grubber has gotten very comfortable in the so called apple bubble environment, I don't blame him though. But you gotta take his advice considering where he's at, and to be honest his advice is informative at least.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#87

Post by jcurbo »

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…

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_gruber) says he has a BS in compsci and worked at Bare Bones Software and Joyent before he started doing Daring Fireball and writing as a full time thing, so it looks like he has at least some experience in the software developer trenches.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#88

Post by comedian »

ootachi wrote: post #76
comedian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Angry Birds.

Ads.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#89

Post by josephcooney »

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…

whoops. I meant markdown, not movable type.

Re: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers

#90

Post by jakobe »

cppsnob wrote: post #80

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…

There are two reasons why the platform matters:

1) You might not want to build the next Facebook. Many developers don't actually plan to start multi-billion-dollar companies. If you are an individual developer, or a small team, you cannot cater to everyone, you must pick the one platform most suitable for you. And then you can go create a niche app and make a decent living from it.

2) Even big and successful companies started on a single platform. A classic example would be Adobe: Photoshop was initially a Macintosh-only application, and has been ported only when it was already hugely successful. But actually Rovio is the best example that the choice of platform is extremely important: They have been hugely successful only when they started selling their iPhone app, and started porting to other platforms only when they were already extremely successful.

Hell, even Facebook, Twitter, Google started on a single platform: the web.

Post reply on HN