Heh, Naggum. Why do we still talk about him? Did he build awesome things? Did he change the world? Affect so many lives by being a great teacher?
One thing he did do was hate a lot. You can find him throwing hate at whatever it is you hate, no problem. Perl, C++, XML... whatever (except Lisp), he probably wrote an article flaming it. So when you want to find a well-written article lambasting whatever it is you hate, you can look to Naggum.
And while he wrote those thousands of USENET posts, the rest of us were off building great things with the stuff he hated on. He was barely on my radar until he died, and looking through archives I realized he actually responded to me a couple times. I guess I was too busy making stuff to pay much attention.
I can't really be bothered to cite references since I'm typing this on an iPad and I doubt you'd care but I do like to point out for others than he has build great things and worked on influential projects (take SGML for example).
I can only dream to attain 10% of the technical prowess he achieved in his short life.
If I remember the numbers, leading up to the WP7 launch, MS dropped roughly 100 million on marketing. They sold less than 100,000 units on launch week. Whatever the exact numbers, I remember someone pointing out it would have been more cost effective to give the phones away for the launch.
It's still that way today. They have no mindshare of the public at large, nor the developers, nor the carriers, nor the handset makers. Somehow, you have to make a product compelling to one of these. iOS is compelling for 2 of the 4 and Android is compelling for all 4. WP7 is compelling to zero of the 4.
For example, they have to fix the native C++ development option. This is especially important for games. Whether or not C# is nice, thanks to only being in C#, every development for that platform becomes a full-on port. If you design your code right for iOS and Android, you can use mostly the same code for both, and just a few glue points for the rest, AND you can develop for both on the Mac instead of having to fire up Windows just for that platform.
The 3rd party development option is so abysmal that Microsoft has been paying for apps to be ported to this platform for two years now. This situation is not sustainable by any measure.
At this point Microsoft is 4 years behind Apple and Google. No one cares if something is arguably better. That's the Zune. That's the Mac in the 90s. Microsoft has to do something that's _compellingly_ better, to someone, somewhere, on some basis that makes money.
> "MS dropped roughly 100 million on marketing. They sold less than 100,000 units on launch week."
And I'm wondering how anyone in MS marketing is still employed. You just blew $100m on promoting a product and sell 100K units - how are you not fired? (out of a cannon)
Where did all of that money go? I remember seeing a single TV ad at WP7's launch, and nothing more. In comparison, Verizon practically plastered my local transit system in Droid ads for that launch, and guess what, people were talking about it.
Between Seinfeld and this, I'm not sure why there hasn't been a complete and thorough house-cleaning in MSFT's marketing department.
BTW, you're right... the biggest thing keeping Windows Phone 7 back is a C++ development option.
They could also benefit the platform a lot by either backing MonoTouch/MonoDroid hard or come out with their own way of running .Net on those platforms. Oracle has already ported Java ME's JVM to both iOS and Android for running JavaFX applications.
That might help with games that really need to eke out performance, but there are a lot of simpler apps that could be enabled and aren't there yet. Things like Mint or TaskRabbit for example, likely would not use native code. Seems to me like the major issue holding developers back is not the lack of tools, but rather the flat adoption rates.
"Seems to me like the major issue holding developers back is not the lack of tools, but rather the flat adoption rates."
Well, there's a chicken an egg problem here. Microsoft will have flat adoption rates as long as they're in 3rd(or worse) place and they don't make it easier to target their afterthought of a platform with code used to target iOS and android... or vice versa.
This may all be true but Microsoft has something that neither Google or Apple has... that is skype. Once skype is integrated fully into Windows Phone; it will be the best communication device off all of them. Skype is the communication tool of businesses. Once skype in rolled into the basic functionality in the same way as: MSN messager, facebook and text messaging, it will be dropdead simple to make a skype call or message with someone as if you are text. Microsoft will steal the market share from Blackberry and the other mobile phones for business and then expand from there.
> Microsoft has to do something that's _compellingly_ better, to someone, somewhere, on some basis that makes money.
$20 says Microsoft will take over the mobile enterprise market from the now weak grasp of RIM, by focusing on security and enterprise features.
Enterprises care about security. They want someone who owns the platform they can thump in the head when something goes wrong. They want complicated features to centralize control. They want the operating systems quickly patched when vulns are published.
The Android ecosystem is a disaster, in this regard. By separating the roles into OS developer, manufacturer and carrier (Google, HTC/Samsung/etc, Verizon/AT&T/etc respectively), it's created an environment with too many mixed incentives -- many that are at odds with the customer's needs.
Google produces the operating system, the manufacturer adds their customizations to differentiate, then also adds per-carrier tailoring. The carriers then have to validate/test and release.
Motorola detailed this process as an excuse/apology/statement in early December. [1]
New OS upgrades and security patches become the responsibility of the manufacturer, but the manufacturer's incentives to support the hardware platform for the long-term are weak -- in fact, if the platform is doing poorly, they are incentivized to do the opposite: cut their losses and move on. As customers, our influence is limited, since our relationships are with the carriers.
This if further complicated by the manufacturers rapid iterations with various hardware designs, to try and find the right price points to compete with the iPhone. They're shipping hardware platforms barely capable of running the current version of the OS, with no roadmap for future software upgrades.
Apple has done a great job managing the platform, but they do so in their typical Apple style: with little communication and inconsistent rapidity of responses. Being held at arms length and kept in the dark is not reassuring to any CISO whose enterprise data dependent upon the platform's security.
Of course, I think it's a safe bet those CISOs are more comfortable with Apple's silence than Android's clear security failures.
DeGusta's chart from October [2] captured much of this. There are hardware platforms where we sign two year agreements with the carrier, but receive only four months of security patches from the manufacturer. In whose world is that acceptable?
There are signs Microsoft recognizes the security updates problems and is putting the infrastructure in place to manage updates themselves, independent of carrier. [3] There are also signs they recognize the challenges Android's laissez faire hardware specs brings, and are more tightly controlling the hardware requirements. [4]
Microsoft's focus so far has been consumer-oriented, initial traction and to establish the ecosystem to allow _any_ platform. Ars had a writeup last week that captured current status in typical Ars completeness. [5] They'll work it out eventually. Microsoft can't fail in this, and the carrier and hardware manufacturers _want_ an alternative to the Apple gorilla. The next year will see some pivots, compromises and changes -- but ultimately they'll work it out.
And by then they'll have taken over the enterprise market.
Is there really an "enterprise" market any more for mobile devices? Most people don't want to carry two phones. I'm not sure it's enterprises that get to decide which devices people will carry any more in most cases, especially with higher-end knowledge workers. If you look at banks and law firms, (traditionally two of the more conservative enterprise users of mobile devices) they're increasingly allowing iPhone and/or Android devices because of demand from their users.
I agree that the Android ecosystem is messy, but it also has better support for allowing "company specific" applications than the iPhone, which represent a huge advantage for large companies interesting in deploying internal directories, field sales applications, and other internal software to their mobile devices. At the same time, Apple has been improving iPhone enterprise support for years (exchange support, corporate app support, security, etc.), so it's not like they're ignoring this market, either.
If I'm a CIO choosing which devices I want to support beyond Blackberries, am I really able to say with a straight face "we're not going to support iPhones or Android, but we'll offer Windows Phone 7"??? Not if I don't work for Microsoft.
Of the smartphone OSes and hardware currently available, only RIM has what I'd consider good security, and Apple iOS is pretty good. Android and WP7.5 have basically no hardware-based protection, and given the UI/UX of the phone, it's unreasonable for people to use passphrases resistant to offline brute force attacks -- all the work factor stuff with scrypt/bcrypt/etc. doesn't apply when you have a huge asymmetry between normal use hardware (slow, cheap, low power phone) and attacker (general purpose CPU attached to the wall).
As I recall, Microsoft made it dead simple to port xbox games to WP7. So for the major titles, C++ shouldn't be the issue, and I would think the xBox thing could be a major strength.
No, they made it possible to port XNA games to the platform. Except that XNA != XBOX SDK.
XNA is a .NET-based game SDK that some people have used for Xbox Arcade games. As far as I know it hasn't been used for any disc-based games. Games like Modern Warfare are written in C++, top to bottom, with potentially some Lua for scripting.
Lack of C++ is a huge issue on WP7, ask any game developer you know who is working on the platform.
no no no..a game developers do not use the same exact code for both iOs and Android..as the app life-cycle and other things are different enough that its a full port..especially when you consider that the UI is 70% of the code
Yea no. Now that the NDK is somewhat decent, 95% of the code we write for a game is shared between iOS and Android. We have our own GUI layer as well because it was a cost effective choice when compared to the option of re-writing our UI for each platform for each game. The parent is very correct as well, lack of native code support is a HUGE problem if they expect to get a rich ecosystem of games for their smartphone platform.
"unless you’re willing to spend beaucoup dollars on buying and operating physical infrastructure"
This is the biggest misconception out there about cloud computing.
Cloud computing has nothing to do with saving money. It is usually MORE expensive than comparable--and even more powerful--physical hardware. The advantage of cloud computing is the ability to spin up and shut down instances when you want.
I normally wouldn't respond to a post like this but when it comes to career advice, many of you who have not been in the workforce long should hear the counterpoint.
The Austin businesspeople are right: folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it. On average, they'll earn more than most people in Austin, but less than their counterparts in Silicon Valley.
I see no problem with this. It's fair. You usually only get to choose where you want to live or where you want to work. The other one is a compromise. That's life. Compromises. Why would a businessperson not take advantage of this when someone wants to live in Austin? Maybe the OP doesn't want to live there but a lot of people do.
Working remotely is a compromise further: you will get paid less, you'll get promoted less, and you will be one of the first laid off.
The OP can rant all she wants about "[companies lacking] the tools to communicate remotely, [probably] can’t communicate at all", but the all of us who have done this can tell you that remote workers are almost never as productive. They only work for "guy who takes the app and ports it to Android because we don't care to do it here" type of projects. 1-3 person projects. Large projects are hard enough to manage with the people in the office, and going remote is a nightmare. I've even seen 10 year experts on the specific codebase try to work remotely and it be completely unproductive when they're remote.
There will be exceptions. The one guy who's amazing as a remote worker. Sales people are always an exception. And of course, all of this turns on its head when the company is not desirable. A crap company will pay you a lot to work remotely, then go out of business 6 months later. Generally though, what I've spelled out here is the way it is.
Here's a proposal, given that she's in Austin already, the OP should demand $150K from those companies or her current employer based on this blog post. Tell us what happens over the next 3 months, 6 months, 2 years.
I disagree. The original article is specifically about attracting good talent to Austin. Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave. You need to come up with good reasons for them to leave which outweigh the massive black hole of attraction for tech talent which is the valley. Offering a significant salary cut is not going to help your cause -- you cannot be losing on hygiene factors when you are selling from a weak position.
Trying to sell the candidate on the cost of living being lower is actually bogus anyway. At high salary levels you cannot look at cost of living as a percentage difference, you need to look at absolutes. A thirty percent pay cut on a 150k salary works out to about 2500-3000 per month after taxes. This is a lot more than the absolute value cost of living difference.
Making it even worse, you are asking candidates to move from an environment where they have a couple hundred interesting alternate employment options, all at that 30% higher salary, if the current job does not work out. They are moving to a, at best, tertiary market -- meaning there is a very good chance that they will have to move again for their next job.
"Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave" - I get your point but many people once they have families feel pressure to get out of SV probably due to long hours, cost, etc. Not everyone leaves but I've seen many good engineers leave to the more affordable tech hubs (Austin, Portland, Seattle, etc.) I have to admit that once I started visiting these places I can now understand why many people move.
why would you move your family to an area with less opportunity for them? Is their partner going to be able to find a "propper" job will their kids get a good education and have a wide choice of "propper" carrears (or will they join the army as thats the best choice on offer)
Its probably worth saying that there is a big difference between moving from SV/SF to Seattle, Portland, or Austin, and moving to a small town of 1000 people in the middle of nowhere.
Opportunity for career growth isn't the only factor in where a family moves - there are a number of other concerns like safety, values, closeness to family, and fresh air and water.
While it may be correct that "folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it," that is not what this article is about. Instead, the author is talking about Austin companies trying to bring developers there that otherwise would be somewhere else (i.e. people who do not want to live in Austin). In that case, its a simple matter of value to the potential employee as to how much extra they need to be paid in order to relocate to somewhere that they had no intentions of living.
Agreed. If you're a developer looking to live in Austin, you may very well expect a lower salary; but, if someone is trying to recruit me to Austin, I'd actually expect a higher salary than in California, as I would much prefer San Francisco to Austin. (Quality of life considerations might come into it as well, as mentioned in the article; $150k will get you much farther in Austin than in San Francisco. But I only spend so much of my money locally; don't expect me to take a paycut to come out to live somewhere I have no particular interest in living.)
> The Austin businesspeople are right: folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it.
"Should"? Huh?
Did you read the article? Austin companies are having a hard time finding talent. How they can improve their situation is simple economics. That's it. There is no "fair", whatever that means.
> but the all of us who have done this can tell you that remote workers are almost never as productive
> How they can improve their situation is simple economics. That's it.
Actually, 80% of the interesting comments in this thread are about how this statement is absolutely false. In the words of another commenter, quality of life is not fungible. Just about any decent developer can go work for Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and get paid 2x what they make stateside. Go be a civilian contractor in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and get maybe 3x. Why doesn't everyone flock to these amazing opportunities, if it's all just simple economics?
Half of what those execs are doing is promotion. It's always shocking to me the number of people who think Austin is like every other redneck part of Texas. Dispelling those myths and getting the word out about the quality of life here is why they pay their dues to the Chamber of Commerce in the first place.
(Many people in the Northeast, for instance, can't even fathom what 300 warm, sunny days a year means. You really can't put a dollar figure on that.)
"Just about any decent developer can go work for Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and get paid 2x what they make stateside. Go be a civilian contractor in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and get maybe 3x. "
As a thought experiment, what if this dev were to get paid a 100x or a 1000x what he could get stateside? Then would you spend a couple of years in Saudi Arabia?
It is about "simple economics", it is just that the price isn't perceived to be high enough, for most good devs stateside, to justify the move to Saudi Arabia. Increase the salary sufficiently to overcome the "climate premium" (and the alcohol premium and the lifestyle premium and the pretty women premium and .... and ...) and you'll see a flow the US to Saudi Arabia (or from California to Denver or whatever).
In other words all the factors that make the Valley a better place than Austin for good devs to migrate to, have a dollar cost. Match or exceed that and devs will go wherever. 2x isn't sufficient to overcome Saudi's perceived yuckiness. 10x or 20 x might work. Pay twice California salaries and Austin companies will have no problems hiring. Good developers are hard to come by in Austin at the price these dumb CEOs are willing to pay. Quelle Surprise!
Fwiw, I've visited Austin and worked in California. If I had to choose today, given two equally interesting jobs and roughly comparable pay (adjusted to cost of living even), I'd pick Austin any day. But that is just me.
"Equally interesting jobs" would be the tough part I think. Id Software is (or was) located in Austin and I doubt they have problems attracting good devs. If your company produces yet another boring businessy CRUD app or social network or Groupon clone or whatever, it might be more difficult.
Of course it's not all about money. I'll take it from your defensive tone that you live in Austin. I do too. I also moved here from San Francisco.
Austin is a great city, but the main thing that kept me happy is that I was able to keep working my job from San Francisco remotely (until I decided to leave). When I start looking again I highly doubt I will find work that is very interesting or pays very well. Plus, like Garann said, most jobs will come with long, boring commutes unless I want to move out to the suburbs (I don't).
I'd argue that many, many software developers in the bay area already know Austin is not "every other redneck part of Texas". All of my friends and coworkers from SF had either been to Austin and liked it or actively wanted to visit sometime. Most SF software devs are not natives, they're from places like Texas and many I've met would like to get out of the bay area, but what Austin is offering is not making it worthwhile.
I want to keep living here. The money and type of work are the only real things in question... and I think this is true of more people than you think. If the only response Austin wants to give is "well, you don't want to live here enough!" then I wish the city the best of luck retaining and finding talent. I'll keep working remote, or have to move back to the bay area, probably. This sucks because I like the town in all other ways.
Here's the opening of the article she referenced: "Austin's supply crunch for software developers was bad enough by September to prompt 25 Central Texas tech executives to fly to California in search of new talent."
Here's your argument: Maybe the OP doesn't want to live there but a lot of people do.
Apparently, 25 Central Texas tech executives think you are wrong.
So since we (well, everyone it appears but you) are talking about finding people who have not chosen to live in Texas, perhaps those companies might need to persuade people to move.
You'd have to pay me EXTRA to work in Austin, frankly.
No, 25 Central Texas tech executives just want to ignore the prevailing market forces on tech salaries.
You might not like Austin very much, but many, many bright tech folks here love it. Conversely, I know quite a few people that left the bay area because they couldn't stand the tech scene there. Different strokes for different folks, but the bottom line is that just as the Austin execs are wrong to ignore the upward trend on salaries, you are wrong to discount the dollar valuation of improvements in quality of life.
You want us to "buy your product", and you sincerely believe that if we make the switch, we'll be happier. You've gotten all the early adopters, and all the malcontents. How are you going to attract everyone else who is still living in SF?
This is basic fucking customer development 101. Apparently, your Tech Execs think the answer is:
1) Buy everyone a beer and a taco.
2) Offer less salary because our product is Awesome!
Note: cost of switching for us: Move 1500 miles. Miss friends. Make new friends. Break rent contracts. Find rent contracts. And if we, in fact, do not like your product, we have to switch back again. I don't like AT&T much, but you're asking me to break my contract with them, and sign a contract with you to pay more for the same service because it'll be better quality. And if I don't like it, I'll incur the same costs going back to AT&T.
If this is how you "bright tech folks" in Austin do customer development, well...
Whoa there. I don't not want to live in Austin. I wouldn't choose Austin if I were making the choice now, and that's for exactly the reason you provide: the work I want to do isn't here. As someone who's already here, I don't demand what I could get in the Bay Area, because I can't move there. Although I'm using my own experience in the post, this isn't about me - it's about the people Austin companies want to hire, who often need a reason to move here over SF, NYC, or any other place.
Fair enough, let me add to my counterpoint another piece of personal experience [I see another commenter ripped me for telling an anecdote -- what posted to HN is ever NOT anecdotal or opinion].
Have you ever worked at a company where they've brought in the "hotshot" from <name successful tech company here>? I have. I worked for a tech company in a non-hot-tech location that, once we got big enough, brought in hotshots from California. They almost all were:
1) Overpaid -- in our opinion because we were paid far less since we had lived and worked there for a long time.
2) Know-it-all A-holes.
3) Out within 6 months anyway because they realized it wasn't interesting compared to their last hot-shot job.
The people who came to our company because they actually wanted to live there ("move back", as it often was) and were making a sacrifice to do it... now those people were into it and stayed for years. I think this is what the Austin companies are looking for. They're out in the Bay trying to find the ex-UT, ex-Texas, maybe even just ex-Midwest people would like to contemplate moving back. I think that sounds reasonable before throwing lots of money at people who might not otherwise consider the move.
just because you had bad luck with "hotshots from California" doesn't mean that everyone of them is as you describe. As for trying to find ex-UT, ex-Texas, people, well, why don't they just ask for them?
>Working remotely is a compromise further: you will get paid less, you'll get promoted less, and you will be one of the first laid off.
Employers take heed: If you can't afford to pay $150K, if you can figure out how to communicate remotely, you quite often get a deep discount on wages (or a dramatic increase in employee satisfaction) if you find someone that wants remote work that can't find said remote work.
At my last full-time job, some of the best people there worked remote and came in once a month or so. It was fairly clear that these people worked remotely because they were so valuable, and working from home was the perk they demanded as compensation.
As far as I can tell, all people are aware that working from home is a big benefit to the employee; but from what I've seen? people who work from home because they are good enough that they get the working conditions they demand don't get laid off.
I mean, from what I've seen, the employer looks at it as compensation, too; so you might be right that if two people with the same skill and the same pay worked at the same company, one working from home and the other in the office, the one working from home might get let go of first. But if the work from home person is more skilled or is getting paid less (which is usually the case) then they are not more likely to get laid off.
(As a side note, personally I think that getting laid off in the first round is almost always the best outcome for an employee. In the first round, if it is a large company, there are usually severance packages. This package gets smaller in subsequent rounds. Also, if you don't get laid off? well, they reduced the number of workers, but not the amount of work that needs to be done. It's no fun.)
sorry.. counterexample here.. I work remotely...(very remotely).. get paid a shit ton, and get to live where I want, and work on what I want. No one needs to compromise
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.
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.
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.
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.
I disagree. I think companies ought to develop for every platform, companies ought to create a market, but developers ought to specialize generally.
I don't think most developers are capable of being excellent at iOS development, web development, Android development, desktop development, etc.
Certainly it's not advantageous to specialize only in a particular language (particularly a dying or dead one), but that's quite different from a specializing in a particular platform.
If they have worked with developing in these many areas, they'd likely have some experience in each, but be not experts in any -- there are just too many.
If, as a developer or startup founder, you see yourself as someone capable of creating interesting applications, specializing in one particular client side technology isn't going to get you very far. Apart from games, I don't see many interesting applications built on iOS alone.
But the title of this thread is about "career advice", so if taken to mean "what's going to make me employable in the coming years?", Gruber may have a point. There will be a large number of jobs at ad agencies making cookie cutter "branded experiences" on top of iOS (unless it's swept away by HTML5). It may be a good career choice for people who used to specialize in Flash.
Personally, I don't find it particularly appealing to say the least.
As long as I'm concerned - UNIX is the only platform worth to build on for the long term. Anything else is just a temporary ripple in the ocean of technology on which everyone cashes up and leaves.
Apple's goal (and every other platform maker's goal) is to commoditize app development. There are already hundreds of thousands of apps in the store. I don't say that developers shouldn't develop for iOS, I just say that Gruber's article generates false hopes for the developer masses.
Modern Warfare 3 runs on the Microsoft (Windows/Xbox) and PS3 platforms. Like Angry Birds run on the Android and iPhone.
Modern Warfare 3 didn't create their own platform, and no sane game studio will create their own platform. They'll follow what people buy. People bought xBox, okay, get that game on Xbox. People bought schelabiza to play games, okay, get that game on schelabiza.
Modern Warfare 3 made much more money because it's not Angry bird. Like GTA, Skyrim... these are games that you pay $30-$50 for and not a buck.
What Gruber meant is this: This platform is going to be huge. Really huge. He is betting on iOS. Investing your time learning/developing on iOS is good for your career because you'll be able later to create apps, work on companies, do consulting...
> Everyone who thinks "I should be developing for platform X" is thinking far too small.
I started to develop for the web and the browser "platform" in the late '90 and it is still going strong. Maybe it is _you_ who are thinking too small? Back in the '90 we knew that the next big thing would be mobile, but it never happened. It was first when Apple introduced the iPhone, iOS SDK and the AppStore that we got a breakthrough and everyone could develop and get their app on a mobile device. Before Apple, only a select few, anointed by telecom operators and for a step price could get their app on a mobile set. I say that Apple paved the way for making development for the mobile platform accessible for "everyone" and now finally, mobile might just be the next big thing. What is interesting is that the browser "platform" still is a strong alternative for mobile and native apps.
The web is not a platform in the sense that we're talking about here. It's a set of open, free, non-proprietary specifications that anyone can implement on top of. iOS is not that. Just like Windows is not that.
fwiw, I realize it's just an example, but Rovio (Angry Birds) has been surprisingly good about building the brand and so forth. They also have a ton of licensed products (stuffed animals, etc...), and there will be an Angry Birds movie from what I understand.
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.
"""how many of the great companies were formed developing for a particular platform (unless it's their own)? Almost none."""
Tons. But depends what you mean by great. I hear that that Angry Birds company is doing ok. And I know there are thousands of companies making Windows only products that make quite well.
"""In 10 years, do you want to be the old and busted equivalent of the MFC expert whose software was hot in year 2000?"""
Neither I want to be the old and busted failed startup founder.
"""You don't make the Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, of the world by developing just for iOS."""
More like: you don't make the Google's, Facebooks, Twitters, period. Those kinds of companies are so few, you are almost as likely to win the lottery than create one.
It's just the protestant ethic of "hard work = success" and the retroactive worshiping of their founders that makes it seem not so.
There's nothing wrong about building a smaller business, either a lifestyle mom+pop shop, or a 100 employee company. Not only there's nothing wrong about it, but you are far more likely to succeed.
One thing he did do was hate a lot. You can find him throwing hate at whatever it is you hate, no problem. Perl, C++, XML... whatever (except Lisp), he probably wrote an article flaming it. So when you want to find a well-written article lambasting whatever it is you hate, you can look to Naggum.
And while he wrote those thousands of USENET posts, the rest of us were off building great things with the stuff he hated on. He was barely on my radar until he died, and looking through archives I realized he actually responded to me a couple times. I guess I was too busy making stuff to pay much attention.