

Paying for Great Software is like Paying for Fine Dining - BilalBudhani
https://supportbee.com/blog/2013/05/03/paying-for-software-fine-dining/

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abcd_f
Other than great food and great software depend on execution, there's very
little analogy. As much as I'd like for users to select my piece of software
over competitors', because it's 10x smaller and eats less CPU, even if it's
more expensive, it's just not going to happen. And even if it would've
happened, McDonalds still makes more than French Laundry. I don't like it a
bit, but that's life.

~~~
kbenson
McDonalds makes more money for many reasons, and I don't think they are all
specific to that industry.

McDonals is cheap. Not everyone lives on a budget that makes it possible for
them to eat at French Laundry. For many that it is _possible,_ they can't
justify it because the extra expense is better spent on other items that will
have a greater impact on their lives.

McDonalds is quick. You are less likely to encounter extended delays that
impact your schedule in any way. McDonalds taking _four times_ as long to
deliver a hamburger to you probably means you had to wait an extra 5-10
minutes.

McDonals is convenient. There's probably one close by. As we've covered, it's
also quick. Getting and eating your food is a very simple, well understood
process.

I think you can apply this to many markets. The there are high-end products
that work by offering quality, and low-end products that work by offering some
combination of convenience, speed and low-cost.

~~~
pattisapu
McDonalds is a known quantity. If you're in an unfamiliar area of town, or
some other town, or just need to grab lunch without a big production you can
do it at McDonalds without reading a menu, considering options, prices, etc.
-- and without the risk of getting food that wasn't what you
wanted/expected/understood at the outset.

~~~
kbenson
This brings to mind an interview I saw on Top Gear once with an Olympic
athlete after the Olympic games in China, and he commented on how he ate
McDonalds before competing.

His reasoning was that in a foreign country, the last thing you want to do
before competing professionally is to subject yourself to food you are
unfamiliar with (or just don't know if the local variety will cause problems).

Similarly, in parts of Mexico where US citizens are advised to be careful of
the water, if bottled water isn't available or desired, a bottle of coke or
beer works as a stand in, because there's trust in the product and it's
uniformity across regions.

Note: Yes, I know Mexican coke is different[1], but I'm lucky enough to live
in CA where I can get it at any of the 10 Taquerias within a mile of me.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Coke>

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diego
No. You cannot taste great software. You cannot even know it's great through
your senses (the product may be great but the software could be crap). You
cannot take someone out on a date and enjoy great software. You don't
occasionally splurge and enjoy an evening of great software that you later
remember as a happy time.

I'd go on, but this is one of the most farfetched similes I've seen on this
site.

~~~
pattisapu
Software doesn't (yet) offer the same aesthetic and emotional experiences of
fine dining. But aesthetics and emotions are important to the software
experience. I think that's the author's rather modest argument, that those
experiences are parts of the puzzle in addition to price point, value-add,
etc.

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dangrossman
> Three, five or ten people companies where every team member is passionate
> about software craftsmanship. 37Signals, Balsamiq and Github are the obvious
> examples.

GitHub has 136 employees listed on LinkedIn. Last time I had checked it was
under 100. I wonder if anything's changed since Zach wrote about scaling
employees in 2011 -- do all 140 people still sit in a chat room and have zero
managers?

~~~
justincormack
I believe they still do. I think there are over 200 of them now.

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imjared
I think I get it but this is a weird analogy. Fine dining is an experience;
great software provides value in that it enhances workflows, allows you to do
your job better, etc.

~~~
fohlin
You just described the core of the analogy: experience.

There are many cases where I and others choose much more expensive
applications to which there are fine inexpensive (or free) alternatives. Just
knowing the amount of “unnecessary” design or development work may be enough
to increase pleasure of use.

Of course, the extra work may also have directly beneficial effects,
functional, esthetic, or otherwise. Fine dining tends to be tasty.

~~~
ctdonath
Agreed. Plenty of free programs do the job, but "costs" one way or another
(ex.: ads). I'll pay (more) for programs which improve the experience by not
distracting me with ads or irritating user interfaces (looking at you SONY).
I'm old enough to start realizing life is finite; better to pay more for a
good experience on top of getting something done (be it remote data access or
topping off my nutrition for the day).

The short answer: it's why Apple is making boatloads of cash. "But you can get
an equivalent machine for a fraction of the price!" arguments abound;
nonetheless, its that "fine dining" attention to detail which rakes in tens of
billions of $$$ _profit_ per _quarter_.

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arctangent
Software is a tool. Paying for great software is like paying for great tools -
upfront cost may be higher but you save time and money over time.

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ensignavenger
And Open SOurce software is like cooking at home- endlessly customizable, may
(but not always) take more effort, but generally provides a superior
experience (with an occasional epic fail).

Eating out is nice occasionally, but I avoid "fine dining" establishments and
their exorbitant pricing, because they usually leave me hungry (I have
observed portion sizes being inversely proportional to prices at such
establishments), and besides, my wife and I can cook up a superior meal using
freely available recipes (sometimes of our own making) in about the same
amount of time it takes to go out to eat.

Cooking at home saves money, and so does Open Source software :)

~~~
resu_nimda
I think you've missed the point of fine dining, or maybe it's just not for
you. It's not about the utility of refilling your hunger meter. Like the
article says, you're paying for the whole experience, and the level of
craftsmanship. I also highly doubt you can make a superior meal, that's a
little offensive to people who focus their lives and careers on the art of
food. It's subjective, of course, but similar to how some companies think they
don't need software because their home-grown spreadsheet solution is
"superior" (i.e. cheaper).

I mean, if it's just not your thing, that's fine, but your comment is
stereotypical of the purely utilitarian and rather smug perspective often
taken by nerdy types. No doubt you find fashion equally frivolous and can't
fathom why people would pay above Target prices for clothing.

~~~
mindcrime
_I also highly doubt you can make a superior meal, that's a little offensive
to people who focus their lives and careers on the art of food._

Meh. In my experience you reach a point of diminishing returns _very_ quickly,
in terms of price / quality ratio at "fine dining" restaurants. Paying $40.00
for a steak gets you a significantly better steak than the $15.00 one, yes.
But paying $80.00 for a steak doesn't get you much more, if _any_ more than
the $40.00 steak. And I, for one, have no problem believing that a home chef
can replicate the $40.00 steak in their own kitchen.

Most of what you're paying for at those upscale, trendy, fine-dining places is
service, ambiance, status-signalling,ego gratification, etc. You don't pay 4
times more for a meal because you expect the food to be 4 times better.

~~~
biot
You are also paying for superior quality ingredients. That $80 steak might be
because the restaurant has an exclusive relationship with a specific organic
beef rancher and you can't buy that rancher's meat in regular stores. Those
grilled scallops may have been caught that morning, sent fresh to the
restaurant, and shucked five minutes prior to you eating them.

If you're only getting grocery store quality ingredients at a fine dining
restaurant, you're getting ripped off.

~~~
mindcrime
_You are also paying for superior quality ingredients._

Agreed, that is part of it. But I will contend that a 4x increase in price
does not reflect a 4x increase in the quality of the ingredients. Now,
granted, that's all very subjective and hard to measure. And all I have is
anecdotal evidence, but on the occasions when I have found myself paying
$80.00 or more for a steak, I've never finished it and thought "wow that was 4
times better than the $20.00 steak I had last week".

 _If you're only getting grocery store quality ingredients at a fine dining
restaurant, you're getting ripped off._

Fair enough. I agree that ingredients do matter, just not sure they fully
justify the higher price of the nicer restaurants. Having grown up at the
coast, near Holden Beach, NC, I got used to eating very fresh seafood. Now,
when I have seafood further inland, I can definitely notice a difference based
on the ingredients not being as fresh. That actually leads to a bit of a
paradox... some restaurants, just due to their location, will never be able to
replicate the best possible seafood experience, due to the need to transport
ingredients. So the $50.00 seafood meal you eat at a restaurant in, say, St.
Louis, probably won't be as good in some regards as a $15.00 meal you could
have in Calabash, NC, just due to geography.

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jiggy2011
This analogy works better if you are considering it as paying for software
related consulting services rather than buying software "off the shelf". After
all some of the worlds best programmers are working on software that is
distributed for free.

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wyck
Haute cuisine is evolving from stuffy, pretentious, overly elaborate food to
food that is more affordable and more available. Some of the tops chefs in
France (and elsewhere) have have already made this shift, and several of them
get downright mad at any mention of fine dining.

Food is about food. If you love it you will love serving it to real people and
make it accessible to all which is more akin to open source. If on the other
hand you think that fine dining of old is the way forward you might find your
self sitting alone.

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eranki
The best food in the world isn't freely available to everyone. The amount you
pay for software may not correlate with quality (expensive government
contracts vs. a few smart guys making a website) whereas top-priced meals are
consistently good. The only cost in software is labor whereas food involves
perishable inventory, fluctuations in demand, etc. that works into the cost.

I'm just sayin they're totally different. But yeah they are both hard.

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mtts
Ridiculous. Poor software is unusable. Poor restaurant food, on the other
hand, is mostly just "meh" and only very, very rarely, unedible.

Fine dining is about paying huge sums of money to go from "good" to "really,
really good". There's no equivalent in the software world whatsoever (Mac
fans: shut up)

~~~
Alphasite_
Poor software can be as dangerous as poor food. And there is, Professional
tools, eg Paint -> Pixelmator -> Photoshop (features more than UI, but you get
the point).

------
ScottBurson
"Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
and to better please you." -- From the menu of Restaurant Antoine, New
Orleans, quoted in Fred Brooks' _The Mythical Man-Month_ (1975).

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RobAley
So how do the large, financially successful, restaurant companies like
McDonalds etc. fit into this analogy?

Should we be looking to make and sell "cheap fast food" software? What about
cooking at home?

~~~
jiggy2011
I imagine Mcdonalds actually employs a lot of very skilled "chefs" (for want
of a better word) who design food that will appeal to the largest cross
section of people possible and can be cooked by people on minimum wage.

You could analogize that to developing software that is easy to use, has mass
market appeal and is easy to deploy.

~~~
ensignavenger
The better word may be Food Scientist, or something similar.

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chrismaeda
Poor analogy. The economics of software production are totally different. You
can't feed the entire world with one meal.

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egeozcan
So the vast amount of free online recipe sites is somewhat like StackOverflow?

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16s
No memory leaks is like no cock roaches on the table.

I'd pay for that.

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terribleZurg
So in the end, it all turns to excrements?

