
Of Wizards and Magical Machines (2012) - mwcampbell
http://sealedabstract.com/rants/of-wizards-and-magical-machines/
======
sroussey
I found this part pretty funny:

>> These articles [about developer shortages] are greatly amusing to me,
partly because I have this romantic notion of characterizing my fruitless
search for a $1.50 car as a “car shortage” and being called for comment by NYT
reporters.

If anything, we have a shortage of bankers and traders on Wall Street. If we
just allowed more immigration, their salaries would come down to maybe only
six or seven digits... ;)

------
angersock
This wonderful article lays out the idea that perhaps we as technologists and
developers are undervalued.

It's a very strange thing, in some ways, because you find out that our utility
to a business starting out and getting an MVP is quite limited--a dumb
wordpress blog and cold calls can actually get you pretty far in many cases.
But then, once you start scaling, the author's step function kicks in, and all
of the sudden you really need to pay developers what they're worth (which is
still not very much in the scheme of things).

I think that it's important to at least keep our minds open to the idea that
we've shortchanged ourselves in the market, and that there are a lot of
problems we're going to be having in the next decade or so if we don't educate
the people who use the fruits of our labors.

~~~
Sven7
My mom makes the same argument about housewives.

Weirdly enough Dwight Howard, Howard Stern and Larry Ellison also think they
deserve better.

Survival of the fittest and all that...for the rest there are unions.

~~~
angersock
It's not quite so simple as all that--again, as the article states, we seem to
have gotten into a point where the true costs of developing software or
hardware are unknowable to anyone other than developers (if them).

We've already seen the bottom drop out of the mobile app market--this is not
simply survival of the fittest. We seem to have given away too much while--
more importantly--teaching too little.

Again, compare our state with doctors and surgeons.

~~~
Sven7
Who is "we" and what have "we" given away?

If we refers to software developers, then you have to realize all software
developers and software companies aren't created equal. Just as all doctors
and hospitals aren't. Though they all go through 10 years of school only some
end up in Manhattan in a penthouse with a view of Central Park.

------
cclogg
That was certainly an interesting read. The costs of things is quite a
conundrum in my opinion too... Photoshop - $600, yet many people are
preferring to use apps on their phone that provide just what they need
(colorization, liquify-type filters, cropping, etc). But back in the day there
wasn't that much choice (and I guess that left piracy to fill in the void).

The other weird area is the app store: 99 cents (and freemium) is a model that
depends on MANY people getting your app, otherwise it's very hard to make a
profit. People don't mind paying for quality, but the low cost bar means
everyone double-takes when they see an app for $5.99... yet on PC that would
be very low for even an indie game or random trial-type-software. Also, app
store discovery = major problem... but that's a separate issue lol.

------
_greim_
So the takeaway of the article as far as I can tell is that technologists (it
talks about software ones but you could abstract it out to all technology
disciplines) aren't good at being powerful. Which makes sense. To be popular
in high school, or to get elected, requires mastering the nuances of the
social order, whereas being an engineer requires mastering the nuances of some
technological problem domain. It's pretty rare for someone to have mastered
both. Obviously there are exceptions but in the general case the article is
right, technologists don't rule the world; they're the primary instruments by
which others rule.

------
mikegerwitz
This echoes---in what I can only call poetry---the cries of countless
developers/hackers suffering (hopefully vocally) through management issues at
their workplace.

It links to another particularly blunt article that should be promptly
forwarded to management in conjunction with the aforementioned one:

    
    
      http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-software-projects-are-terrible-and-how-not-to-fix-them/
    

A more rational "get a fucking clue" (assuming a certain level of respect
toward you already exists).

------
tgb
This article has some misleading wording. It constantly refers to web browsers
as billion-dollar programs in the sense that the total cost of all
development, both intrinsic-to and inherited-by, modern browsers is in the
billions. Yet it does this adjacent to comments on the unreasonableness of
expecting new software for cheap. But new software isn't built in a vacuum -
it's built on the existing technologies that already have the billions of
dollars invested in them.

The author might still be right, but the point is exaggerated to incorrectness
by such juxtapositions. For a post all about not being off by orders-of-
magnitude, I find this misleading and inexcusable.

~~~
wmf
Given that Mozilla's budget is over $10M per year and Firefox has been under
development for over 10 years, saying a browser costs $1B is off by less than
one order of magnitude. Considering that the author is complaining about
confusion of 5-6 orders of magnitude, I find this simplification excusable.

~~~
ankitml
Mozila didnt start from scratch. It started by open sourcing what netscape
was. So you need to add those costs/ years in the calculation. I mean even if
they rewrote it completely, these man years should be added in the estimation
of cost.

------
ericHosick
I really agree that the cost between off the shelf software and custom
software is too large.

We are trying to solve this type of problem by providing a framework
developers can use to create general purpose templates. Those templates, a
long with help on how to configure them, can be used to "slap on a feature or
two".

It is an interesting problem to solve.

------
sidcool
Excellent article. It's meanders through a multitude of topics. As a software
developer this did instill some sense of self respect.

------
abc_lisper
Beautiful article. Just beautiful.

