

John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers - rams
http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2011/11/john-gruber-has-some-career-advice-for.html

======
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.

~~~
jakobe
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.

~~~
cppsnob
How's this:

Whatever you create, even if it's for iPhone first, don't get bogged down on
it being on "platform X". Photoshop, as you mentioned, is a great example, it
didn't need to be on a Mac to be great. It just was developed there first, and
now sells more on Windows (I think).

If you focus too much on the platform, once that market wanes, you end up
nowhere. This is what I meant by the MFC guy -- maybe an even better example
is the VB 6 guy. We know this guy, right? He's an expert with VB 6. He made a
damn good VB6 app 10 years ago, which he's supported since then. But he spent
too long focused on VB6, so god help him trying to get a job today doing C#.

Your idea doesn't have to be as big as Facebook. All I'm saying is, don't get
so focused on the platform that you become that VB6 guy. Focus now, sure, but
developers over time should be broad and flexible. And if you are starting
something new, your idea should be too.

~~~
jakobe
I totally agree with you here. It's important to see when you should switch.
But I think that _right now_ it's a great time to be an Apple developer, and
as I understood it that's what Gruber said.

I don't think that everyone should develop for the iPhone or for the Mac.
There are plenty of possibilities elsewhere. But if you happen to really like
your Macbook, you can actually make a living developing Mac or iOS apps today.

------
Kylekramer
At the risk of being a cynical ass, let's not forget that this is basically
Gruber playing the modern day equivalent of Levi Strauss: "Come to
California/the App Store, you'll get amazingly rich! And while you're here, I
am sure you would be interested in some clothing and dry goods/a $6,500 ad on
the most influential Apple blog."

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Or to put it in words that you might have heard repeatedly from the man
himself, "You are not his customer, the people buying ads are his customer".

------
josephcooney
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 advice from someone who doesn't seem to
be a developer?

~~~
chc
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.

~~~
phil
Notably, it's a piece of software in which well-developed minimalism gets you
better results than anything else.

~~~
JeremyBanks
The idea is good, but his execution and follow-through leaves something to be
desired: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/responsible-open-
so...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/responsible-open-source-code-
parenting.html)

~~~
quadform
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.

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

~~~
angus77
[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-
markdow...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown)

------
goodside
"One simple way to look at it is that there are far more people who've never
bought an iPhone and who've never bought an iPad, who will in the next five
years than all of us who've already bought at least one to this point."

That's one simple way to look at it. Another slightly less simple way is that
the ones that already have Apple devices are the savviest, hippest, and
spendiest consumers around, and you can't possibly hope to milk as much money
per person from the ones that adopt later.

~~~
sipefree
I disagree, though based on the attitude of your comment I'm not sure if
you'll take my point.

Here in Dublin, at least, iPhones are becoming extremely popular, even with
the losertechnicians of the world. Businessmen with no tech skills are
replacing Blackberries with them, teenagers are flocking to get them, and
there are even dodgy-looking iPhone accessory shops in bad neighbourhoods.

Over here, since around the start of this summer, the iPhone 4 has been
available for free on a 40 euro per month contract with unlimited data and
enough minutes/texts for the vast majority of people, on pretty much every
network. That's a really good deal, and a huge number of people bought into
it, figuring that they spend at least that on credit anyway.

When the iPad 2 launched over here, there was a period of 8 months where you
could not find ANY, at all, even in the authorized resellers that Apple likes
the most. At any one time there might have been one for sale in the whole
city.

Android is gaining momentum here too, and I don't know figures for any of
this, but I definitely haven't seem them on as many non-hackers as I have
iPhones.

In conclusion, no, the people who have iPhones are not the Apple-savvy
hipsters. At least in this city.

~~~
SquareWheel
Here is how I see it:

The first wave are the tech enthusiasts, these people are not big app buyers
but are interested in finding a good SSH tool, or an mail client that supports
PGP. These were the main customers of the first iPhone.

I'd say we've been in the second wave for the last couple years. These people
are seeing TV the ads and are curious. Their friends buy iPhones, it makes
sense for them too as well. They're not "hackers", just people that are
willing to try apps. These are your Angry Birds players, and where the main
revenue comes from.

The third and final wave will be moms and general folk who will never sync
with iTunes. It's those people that are never going to buy an app because they
won't know what an app is. And that's fine, they'll like how their phone talks
to them and how they can Facetime to their kids.

I don't mean to say that all iPhone 1 users are "hackers", just that a higher
percentage of them were than are now iPhone 4S users. A lot of those people
likely went off to Android in the recent years, anyhow.

~~~
jonhendry
"The first wave are the tech enthusiasts ... are interested in finding a good
SSH tool, or an mail client that supports PGP. These were the main customers
of the first iPhone."

Given that the first iPhone had no 3rd party apps apart from web apps, this
seems _highly_ unlikely.

It's more likely true of early Android phone buyers.

~~~
SquareWheel
Good catch, though there were definitely apps on the first iPhone.
AppTapp/Installer was introduced around Christmas time if memory serves, and
there were apps, utilities, and even a few games available.

~~~
jonhendry
Still, those presumably required jailbreaking, which I gather was not done by
the majority of iPhone 1 owners, and certainly not by the earliest buyers, who
bought before that was even an option.

------
jerguismi
It would be interesting to know, why being an Apple developer is favourable to
being any other type of a developer? For example, android market share is
already larger than Apple devices, and people still spend lots of time in
front of traditional web browsers.

You can still make fortunes and/or have an interesting career with other
platforms and technologies too.

~~~
cheald
Gruber's right because the mobile market is expanding. However, his loyalty to
Apple keeps him from saying what he really should have said: Get into mobile
(Apple AND Android), hard and fast.

About 77 million of the "big two" (60 million Android, 17 million iPhone)
smartphones shipped in Q3 2011. Apple has a huge install base, but it's not
Apple's game anymore - Android has more than 3x Apple's marketshare, and is on
a meteoric rise in contrast to iOS's slow marketshare decline. More and more
customers are being introduced to mobile devices, and we're still in the early
stages of the mobile landgrab. There's a lot to be won, but it's disingenuous
to focus on Apple as the nexus of that growth.

~~~
GHFigs
It's disingenuous to focus on Apple at a Mac/iOS-centric symposium?

~~~
coderdude
Why are you even asking? You know that's not what he said.

~~~
GHFigs
_Why are you even asking?_

Because this (and several other comments on this submission) appear to attack
Gruber for not talking about Android, and I think that is an extremely unfair
criticisim given that he was speaking to iOS and Mac developers at an event
about iOS and Mac development.

More generally, I have a morbid interest in HN's tendency to flip it's
collective shit whenever Gruber's name is mentioned, and have honestly lost
faith in my ability to tell when that sort of criticism is intentional or not.
So when presented with something that sounds a little dubious, I'd like a
clarification. There have been times in this site's past where that was not
offensive to anybody.

I hope that answers your question.

 _You know that's not what he said._

I don't understand why you take issue with my asking a question but then feel
permitted to tell me what I know, but I don't care, either, so there's that.

------
gcl2
Gruber is like a person who really enjoys eating cupcakes. He knows all about
cupcakes, and even goes so far as to think he knows how to make them. He's
probably baked a few things here and there. Sadly, he also thinks his
'expertise' on all things cupcakes makes him an all round bonafide chef.

~~~
tikhonj
He is more like a person who likes cupcakes from exclusively one cupcake
company and thinks cupcakes made by anybody else are dross.

------
tzury
I am trying to figure out why don't Gruber himself listen to his own advice
and develop iPhone/iPad app already.

I mean, writing good technical reviews and opinions about iOS is a very nice
thing. But give advise to mass developers should be done from experience,
rather than theory.

As for the advice itself, it is right that in five years from now, mobile
devices will be all over the place and today's sales volumes are just the
iceberg's tip, yet, a developer should think about the opportunity of "mobile-
computing" rather than a particular "mobile device". For me, it is a web
developer who decide his web apps are to be working with chrome browsers only,
since the number of chrome installations today is nothing comparing to what it
will be in 5 years from now, and simply ignoring safari, firefox (and even ie,
oops).

~~~
mmahemoff
Given that he's a writer, he _is_ following his advice by focusing on
Apple/iOS.

------
postfuturist
Someone who calls themselves an Apple developer and who doesn't work for Apple
needs to consider expanding their horizons. Mobile developer? That's a little
better. Or just, developer. It's a great time to be a developer.

~~~
danilocampos
You've missed, entirely, the point.

What Gruber is saying is that anyone who is developing for Apple's platforms
is about to enjoy an enormous surge of opportunity. As these platforms see
even further adoption, their capability will only increase. So if you're in
Apple's playground, you're watching it turn into Disneyworld in a way that
will never come again once these devices are baked into people's assumptions
about how the world works.

~~~
coderdude
>>What Gruber is saying is that anyone who is developing for Apple's platforms
is about to enjoy an enormous surge of opportunity. [etc]

Of course he is. That's all he ever does. Everything he says is worthless
because you already know how lacking in substance the man is. Damn the Apple
users who keep upvoting his garbage.

~~~
steve-howard
I wouldn't have put it so harshly myself, but I did see the article and
immediately think "John Gruber is going to tell me to write software for Apple
products." I would have been mildly interested to have been wrong.

------
mmaunder
The pool of revenue is still small: Since the creation of the app store in
July 2008 to July this year, Apple has paid out $2.5 billion to developers and
my projected payout for 2011 is $1.995B.

Even so, competition is fierce. In May this year there were 85,560 unique
developers writing apps for the store.

Having said that, gold rushes are how big cities are built.

~~~
comedian
How about ad revenue from adMob and other 3rd party ad networks? Revenue from
book, magazine, etc. sales, revenue from subscriptions, etc.?

~~~
mmaunder
Good point.

------
mcantelon
>This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties. This is like
being a film maker in the seventies following Scorsese, Coppola, Steven
Spielberg, George Lucas (when he was a saint).

That's a hilarious sell. Better not mention the bigger, even faster growing
Android market.

~~~
ricardobeat
Faster growing, copycat infested, low paying market?

Not that you shouldn't develop for it (hell, >1 million activations/day), but
the climate over there is very different.

~~~
tintin
There is a lot of that 'climate' that you will never see. We are developing
Android apps that will never see a Market Place. We just put them on the
devices directly. Those apps are used by big companies. They are very
specialized apps. Why Android? Because we don't need Apple to install the
apps. And a lot of developers already know Java.

So, don't believe the hype.

~~~
mcantelon
The ability to do this has always been - to me - the obvious advantage of
Android over iOS, but this is the first time I've seen anyone bring it up.

~~~
r00fus
Because there is no advantage - Apple allows organizations to setup their own
App delivery mechanism, which is fully secured - cost to entry is trivial
compared to App dev and normal deployment costs.

------
andrewfelix
I usually find Gruber's tone to be arrogant and unnecessarily facetious. But I
think his analogy is great.. _"This is like being a Rock and roll musician in
the late sixties. This is like being a film maker in the seventies..."_

~~~
barumrho
I don't think that analogy really works because there is not much distinction
between "Apple developers" and other developers. There is no barrier to start
developing on Apple platforms and there probably won't be for the next big
platform. Low barrier to entry is one key factor of a platform's success.

~~~
ryanhuff
Sure there are barriers. A few that come to mind include the $99 per year
Apple developer program fee, which is necessary to distribute apps, the Mac OS
requirement, and the objective c hurdle. These may seem more like
inconvenience barriers, but they do keep people away from the development
pool.

~~~
steve-howard
I'm sure as hell not buying a Mac just to write for Apple's walled gardens.
Inconvenience is an understatement.

~~~
ryanhuff
While not ideal, some people have been able to run mac os on other operating
systems using virtualization.

------
tikhonj
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 many exciting discoveries and inventions to be made even without
gigantic budgets. I think it's something like physics in the early 20th
century, before they started needing gigantic particle accelerators and the
like (I'm sure physics is still exciting and I'm just showing my ignorance,
but I think there's a parallel nonetheless).

Right now is a perfect time to be a developer or computer scientist anywhere,
not just at Apple.

~~~
possibilistic
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.

~~~
snotrockets
All of academic output is an incremental improvement (it may differ for the
social sciences. I don't have experience with that.) Newton famously
acknowledged it in his letter to Hooke.

We also have the misfortune of struggling with the deep unknowns, as all of
the trivial theorems have already been proven before (consider Feynman's
definition of trivial in 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!', New York: W. W.
Norton, pp. 69-72, 1997.)

But some improvements are greater than others. The question is where you draw
the line. And I hold that most researchers' line encompass more then yours.
Consider, for example, Jiří Matoušek's opinion of Computational Geometry in
2010 (to save you the reading, he called it no less than an annus mirabilis.
You can read his reasoning here: <http://kam.mff.cuni.cz/~matousek/mor.pdf>)

------
MatthewPhillips
tldr; John Gruber endorses iOS.

------
chalst
This is like being a Bee Gees clone in the late 1970s!

No disrespect intended to the kings of disco, but being a successful in a
fashion bubble doesn't make you cool or give you shelf-life. I hate this sort
of talking up. Gruber has been really hard to stomach since iOS took off.

"unless something unbelievable, dramatic changes" - You should expect surprise
and drama in a walled garden. Facebook apps have been a lasting source of
substantial revenue for only a few companies.

Why has this story got 118 points?

------
steele
By that logic, it's a much better time to be an Android developer as long as
you support 2.2 and up.

You bring the dynamite, I'll bring the pickaxe & canary, let's gold rush!

------
daenz
tldr; Develop for the App Store and you could be famous and make loads of
money like <insert cultural icon>, or don't and you might just regret your
entire life.

------
rglover
It may sound incredibly frivolous now, but he's right. Irrespective of Apple
or iOS, this is the time to be doing something _more_. I think the message
here goes beyond just developing for iOS, but rather, for everything. Build
something that you love, work for a company where you feel like you're doing
something worthwhile. Whatever you do, make sure you're working on something
that makes you say "fuck yeah." Don't neglect what's about to happen. We're
about to see a major shift in technology and for those who are truly
passionate about it, you'll want to be a part of it.

------
hellotoby
I feel this way too just not about Apple products, but about HTML.

These surely are great days to be a web developer. HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript
coupled with great browser support. It feels like there is so much that can be
achieved!

~~~
robmcm
Browser support is still a huge issue that people tend to gloss over. It's a
problem any standards based environment will face. Native will always develope
faster and be more consistent.

~~~
billybob
If you're shooting for the mobile market, writing a web app that works in the
5 most popular mobile browsers is a lot easier than rewriting your native app
for each platform you want to target.

~~~
robmcm
Isn't there huge fragmentation in Android webkit? Plus focusing on iOS and
Android covers most 'mobile' cases. Other platforms hold a harder
justification.

Perhaps the route forward is a simple web app to cover everyone, then focus on
the top platforms for native.

------
brudgers
> _"This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties."_

In the mid 80's I used to see into Bobby Peterson of The McCoys at various
parties around Gainesville.

Hopefully, it is a poor simile.

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

------
MicahWedemeyer
You could substitute Facebook App in there and moved the clock back about 3-4
years and it would read pretty much identical to blog posts back then.

------
cooldeal
The bottom 80% of apps split just 3% of the revenue.

From [http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-
the-a...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1792313/striking-it-rich-in-the-app-
store-for-developers-its-more-casino-than-gold-mine)

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 slots at a
casino.”

Indeed, as much as app development has been called a gold rush, there is an
equally loud theory that it operates more like a casino.

“The closest thing I’ve seen to a ‘business model’ for marketing iPhone apps
is to advertise like crazy until you get into the top 50,” says David Barnard
of AppCubby. “Once you’re there, the top 50 list will start generating its own
buzz...But that’s not a business model, that’s like rolling the dice at a
casino.”

~~~
comedian
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.

~~~
ootachi
10 seconds was all it took to refute your claim:
[http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-
android-1-m...](http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-
android-1-million-ad-revenue/)

~~~
sixtofour
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.

~~~
enobrev
It can be argued that your son could do quite well as a developer without a
college degree and without having to be a star.

~~~
sixtofour
Not to disagree with you, but ...

It astounds me that there are still jobs for developers. I'm not talking about
SV stars, I mean the hundreds of thousands of programmers writing CRUD apps
around the country. That is eminently moveable, and if the stereotypical code
quality of the stereotypical foreign outsourcing shop is sub par, it's not
because they don't have the same brains as we do, it's merely because a) they
haven't caught up with us yet (they will), and b) they haven't captured that
work as primary developers yet, they're still learning to take that work by
being (at the moment) sub contractors.

Japan after World War II, for example, broke into the market by making "cheap
plastic crap" and motorcycles. Then better plastic crap and small cars
(remember the Honda 600?). Then really good plastic crap and really good cars,
and now that pie is divided among many more people around the world, including
"our" pie.

Why will software be any different? It takes no resources except a brain, a
computer and a connection. The whole world has the same quality of brains and
computers as we, and their connection quality is often much better and cheaper
than ours.

~~~
billybob
"Why will software be any different? It takes no resources except a brain, a
computer and a connection. The whole world has the same quality of brains and
computers as we, and their connection quality is often much better and cheaper
than ours."

It takes one more resource: communication. _Custom_ software development is
quite different from motorcycles. If you need custom software development, and
your business is going to depend on the result, outsourcing that effort to
another country, especially across cultural and maybe language barriers, can
be a disaster. You need developers who understand your business and the
expectations of your customers.

In fact, take your argument and apply it to every other position in a company.
Only a few of them, like sales, truly require an in-person presence, yet
companies don't outsource most of them. Are they crazy, or are there good
reasons for that?

~~~
sixtofour
"If you need custom software development, and your business is going to depend
on the result, outsourcing that effort to another country, especially across
cultural and maybe language barriers, can be a disaster."

For now. Yes, today it often is a disaster. It won't always be so. We didn't
used to have an Indian software industry at all, for example. Now there is
one. And one day it will be a no brainer to send most CRUD work there. In fact
it won't be "sent" there, that function will exist there. And not only because
India and other countries catch up on an industrial scale, but because
businesses will demand it. Supply and _demand_ has two sides, and demand will
be filled, however slowly.

"yet companies don't outsource most of them. Are they crazy, or are there good
reasons for that?"

They haven't got good at it yet, but they're trying and learning, and
suppliers are getting better.

Large corporations only make one thing, money. Each one happens to do it by
selling something different, but what they sell is incidental, what they're
good at is making money. Part of making money is not spending money. If you're
a bank, your software systems may be crucial to your business, but they're two
steps away from the primary business of making money: 1) Make money, by 2)
selling bank services, enabled by 3) software and other systems.

If you can get the same or better quality outside your building you'll do it
if it's cheaper and good enough. If you have a communication problem between
the software department and the investment department, one solution is to send
_both_ departments outside the building, and let them communicate with each
other in a cheaper venue. If it's possible, it will be done.

I'm not saying don't go into software development. I'm saying that the world
changes, and my 13 year old son's career is going to be much different than
yours, inevitably. And your career is going to be much different in twenty
years than it is today, not only because you'll have changed and grown, but
because the world will have changed out from under you. And it gets faster
every day.

Here's hoping that we're all rolling in dollars in twenty years. Or rupees.

------
wavephorm
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.

~~~
Joeri
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.

------
georgieporgie
Everything he said can pretty much be said about the web, too. Along with that
comes the fact that of these millions of news users, hardly anyone will want
to pay a dime for anything.

That was the beautiful thing about developing software in the 90's: people
were still willing to pay for stuff, you just had to figure out the (often
insurmountable) distribution. Now, it seems like the only way to make a
meaningful income is to insert yourself between layers of large business.

