The most important one is the last one: anything custom-made is far more expensive than something that's mass produced. Would you go into a tailor and expect them to make you a suit at the same price as you'd pay for a pre-made suit in a store?
Also third point seems valid. In software any change can be made technically at any stage, at cost of work hours (that can be sometimes priced as low as 0$ in case of unpaid overtime) and the software quality.
The quality is hard to quantify. You can tell apart perfect from usable from unusable, but software very rarely achieves perfect quality and usable software has fair margin from being unusable so changes rarely bring easily noticeable degradation of quality.
But changes do have cost. Developer time has to be paid one or another way eventually and degradation of quality raises maintenance and bug fixing costs. All this has to be (and is) factored in the price of the software.
On the other hand I think the first point is completely bogus. Computers are extremely cheap. Before personal computers I'd have to buy very expensive manufacturing machine to provide such value with so little work. If I had no money to start with I'd be forced to work for somebody who had capital to purchase the machine. I might never be able to afford one myself.
Actually software is extremely cheap because computers are cheap. Software that costs zero could not be possible if computers were expensive.
>Computers are extremely cheap. Before personal computers I'd >have to buy very expensive manufacturing machine to provide >such value with so little work.
That's because you not living in a third world country. In a third world country one brand new dell laptop ( not very high end one) can easily cost as much as the salary of a programmer.
In my country (that fortunately is not third world but also not the first world exactly) I can buy decent (not high end) computer for my monthly developer earnings and I consider this to be really cheap. There is no other machine so cheap that could provide me with way to produce so much value.
Maybe you are being downvoted for spelling cheap as cheep or maybe some programmers feel offended by your "cheap programmers" that sounds degrading. "Less affluent programmers can buy cheaper PC's" sounds better.
Actually, in much of the third-world, this is not true. Hand made is cheaper than manufactured . I know it seems ass backwards, but the best examples I know are in Mexico:
1) Guy selling handmade pots (or any handmade product) -- his product is worthless. Imported electronics -- very expensive.
2) It's cheaper to have 30-50 guys using hammers and handsaws on a home construction site, than to pay for power tools.
So let me get this straight, you're comparing pottery to iPods and from that drawing a conclusion?
Hand made goods are almost never cheaper, even in Mexico. A handmade pot would cost more than a machine produced one. It's just that the cheap labor makes the production equipment an unjustifiable investment because the ROI is less. It's less cheaper, but still cheaper. In general of course.
cheap labor makes the production equipment an unjustifiable investment because the ROI is less
I think that's his/her point. The manufactured pot would need to be priced higher (to pay for the production equipment over a reasonable depreciation period) in comparison to the hand produced pot that incurs no such overhead to produce, just cheap labor. So in effect, yes, a manufactured pot would be more than a hand produced pot.
I do think the commenter confused the matter by including imported items in the argument.
Given unlimited future earnings, you are right that a manufactured product may be cheaper to produce since there's much less labor cost, but in all practicality I'm not sure it applies.
Actually, this is precisely what happened to me a couple years back. I was shopping for a suit, and have found a brand-name pre-made suit costing about $1000 (that's converted, I don't live in the US); then I simply crossed the street and ordered one at a tailor. I had to wait a week or so, but the cost was half the first one. (Of course, there were less expensive pre-made suits available too, but the price of the cheapest one I found was only about 15% less for than the tailor-made one.)
Software is so unbelievably cheap to mass produce. So, "custom-made" anything in software is just dumb business.
And, as your fixed costs (hardware, hosting, etc.) gets cheaper over time, but the people remain just as expensive, why do so many companies aim at "getting big", and don't really do anything about talent dilution?
You're right that software has a negligible marginal cost, but what you're forgetting is that it has high fixed costs. It takes significant time and skill to create quality software. And, since most custom software sells one unit, it's the fixed costs that matter.
