frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted June 03, 2002 07:59 PM
i know what u mean about the specialized programs u use redelk. there are simply some pieces of software that are so specialized they dont have much of a market, and as such the per-unit price skyrockets. problem is that any program worth selling is gonan take a shitload of work to get to market, only about half of it is writing the actual software. i write software in the form of web-enabled products (for lack of a better term), and i can spend forever doing something that at it's base, is very simple. the real time spent comes in making it bllit proof and easy to use, most of all resilient to users who dont understand the program as well as i do and as such enter data that can crash or corupt it. plus, there's the non-programming expenses. the marketting, the meetings, the office space, etc, etc et-fsckin-cetera. when in japan, my time was charged out at about $200US+ and i saw nothing of it. by the time we paid off business expenses and split it in half with my partner, there was nothing left.
what exacerbates the specialized software problem is that regardless of how small the market is, there is usually 5 companies trying to sell it, so instead of u paying 1/100th the development cost, u have to cover 1/20th of it. thats where the concept of a giant like microsoft is good. if everyone uses the same software, then everyone shares the cost. course, that means there is far less work for programmers (fine by me), and more problems are raised by such a monopoly than are solved.
in the end tho, it's same as alot of services. the perceived value is pretty low, cause u see very little of what went into it. just like the old towtruck problem. why do i pay $40 for the towtruck driver to do 10mins of work or less? cause there's so much more work he does when u dont see him, etc.
   
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