Your CIO example was not lost on me. I get it. I'm focusing on the
market and how it effects my ability to make a living as a freelance
developer. For me it is about demand/compensation, is the projected
life cycle long enough to make it worth while making the necessary
investment of time to become competent, and is it something I really
would like to do.
It is kind of like a personal hedgehog -
1) what are you passionate about?
2) what can you be the best at?
3) does it drive your economic engine?
I would add two more
4) is the projected life cycle long enough to reasonably recoup one's
investment to become competent?
5) is the barrier to entry low enough to make the transition worth
while?
I'm sure you can add a couple more.
On 2014-08-04 16:59, David Schwartz wrote:
Back in the 80’s, M$ was just another compiler vendor, one of several.
And they weren’t even considered the best.
It has been estimated that their software development tools division
alone would rank as a Fortune 100 business entity. But they actually
receive very little direct revenues because they get subsidized by
other divisions. Today they exist mainly because they drove everybody
else out of business. It’s hard to compete as a compiler vendor when
M$ gives a company free dev tools if their CIO agrees to buy a huge
bundle of database and OS technology.
The fact that Delphi still exists is amazing in its own right. And it
will be around for quite a while because the Veterans Administration
has one of the largest installed bases of Delphi software in America,
if not in the world, that’s still under active development — and it
would be horribly expensive to replace with M$ technology (although
some does exist).
If the VA ever releases any mobile apps, there’s a very good chance
they’ll be built with Delphi.
Because of this relationship with the VA, Delphi has a rather unusual
affinity with medical software developers.
My earlier point seems to have been missed … if you’re a CIO on a
tight budget and you REALLY want to SAVE MONEY, then it simply makes
no sense to ignore AppMethod or RAD Studio today.
You cannot talk about either Android or iOS development assuming
there’s only one option any more. Android is _mainly_ Java, while iOS
is _mainly_ Objective-C. But AppMethod/RAD Studio supports both, and
now Swift supports iOS.
Also don’t ignore the fact that we’re starting to see Android running
on Intel architectures now, which is going to open them up to non-Java
tool stacks as well. (Some of the latest low-end Acer tablets run
KitKat on Intel CPUs.)
Personally, I see the potential for much more heterogeneity in terms
of development tools for both Android and iOS going forward than we’ve
seen in Windows, if for no other reason than one company does NOT
control both of them. M$ couldn’t persuade any major phone companies
to use their OS, so they simply bought what was for a long time the
market leader. I have no idea what they plan to do with Nokia, but M$
currently has less than 5% of the mobile platform market; perhaps
Nokia can get them to 10%.
Getting back to that CIO again, now he’s going to be faced hiring yet
ANOTHER developer to work with ANOTHER dev stack for Nokia’s hardware.
That’s now $300k for 3 people using “free” tools vs. $100k and a
single $5k tool.
Something’s gotta give. Free tools are simply NOT an economical model
for companies that MUST have a presence on ALL MOBILE PLATFORMS!
-David
On Aug 4, 2014, at 3:58 PM, [email protected] wrote:
It all makes sense to me. As for the individual, I still wonder what
the Android market will look like 10 years from now. Since it is
Google's baby I think Android has 30 years in it. Look at M$. It has
taken them 30+ years to become less relevant. Maybe the cycle is
speeding up.... maybe it is now 15 years. 15 years is good enough for
me. The other side is enjoyment. I cannot see myself working on
something I do not like...... Maybe Android development might not be
fulfilling.... I won't know until I get a chance to swim in it, and
that might be after the new year.
On 2014-08-04 15:41, David Schwartz wrote:
I understand your point, Keith, but even though Android uses Java,
and
Java IS considered “mainstream”, that does not seem to be translating
into making it easy(er) to find Android mobile developers, is it?
The ones out there ARE getting top-dollar, as well as iOS developers.
C++ is also a mainstream language, and if you get RAD Studio, you get
C++, Pascal (Delphi) and php/HTML5 in the same box, at least two of
which ARE “mainstream”.
There’s also their newest offering, AppMethod, which has a pricing
structure more similar to other RAD Mobile development tools. It’s
basically RAD Studio without the Windows-specific stuff (ie., it’s
mobile-centric rather than Windows-centric).
Honestly, Embarcadero is taking a big gamble by investing in their
cross-platform strategy the way they are. Any company seriously
looking at developing the same app for both iOS and Android is stuck
hiring two development teams with two different development tacks and
two different sets of skill sets.
Using RAD Studio or AppMethod, this can be narrowed down to one, eg.,
Delphi/Pascal or C++, for both platforms.
At some point, a not-too-dense CIO is going to ask, “Why do we need
two sets of developers at $100k PER PLATFORM that uses FREE tools
when
we can spend $5k and only have to pay $100k for ONE developer?”
It would seem that “free tools” are costing an extra $95k to reach
both platforms.
Don’t you think $5k is a lot more affordable than $95k?
(Ok, so if you’re REALLY CHEAP, it’s $50k rather than $100k, but …
that’s STILL at least 10x the cost of a dual-platform development
tool
that ONE person can use!)
-David
On Aug 4, 2014, at 1:56 PM, [email protected] wrote:
In the 80's I began to develop using dBaseII, then dBaseIII...
dBaseIII+, foxBase+, Clipper 87, Visual FoxPro..... It was a great
file server database system that was probably the best tool on the
market for developing small company database applications.
The problem is it was a niche skill set. dBase jobs were few and
far between. I would still be working with FoxPro if M$ had not
bought it and everyone bailed. FoxPro is now dead thanks to M$.
That was the tool of choice for me and I would still be developing
with it if it was up to me.
Having had that experience I am leery of tying my wagon to something
like Delphi. I really enjoyed Turbo Pascal in the early to mid 80's.
I'm sure I would enjoy object oriented Turbo Pascal ie Delphi. I've
heard tons of good things about Dephi going back maybe 10 or 12
years, maybe longer.
Unfortunately Delphi is not main stream enough for me. I do not want
to tie my wagon to another FoxPro.
On 2014-08-04 13:35, David Schwartz wrote:
Delphi is just as easy to use as VB, if not easier.
Have you looked at it lately?
It’s just not considered “mainstream” any longer.
People say, “Oh, is THAT still around?”
Yup. Check it out.
http://embarcadero.com
They also have a tool they now call HTML5Builder or something along
that line, which is an allusion to their C++ Builder app — a C++
version of Delphi. HTML5Builder is a PHP/HTML5 version.
-David "The Tool Wiz" Schwartz
On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:40 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On 2014-08-04 10:57, David Schwartz wrote:
Now we’ve got a new language: Apple introduced Swift and is
making it
available for free, like their other tools. This is going to
stimulate
a whole new generation of devleopers to jump into the fray and
start
building apps for iOS — apps that are going to be hard to “port”
over
to Android platforms, or even web platforms.
I’ve talked with Joe about his app. To his credit, he’s focused
mainly
on the app. But what he’s missed is the fact that, IMHO, he’s
over-spec’ed it to the point where you'd need so much custom code
to
impement what appears to be a simple tool that he’ll never be
happy
with the end result. His UI design makes assumptions based on HIS
experience with *nix shell scripting, and he clearly explains
this in
the spec. There are no native widgets that work like “grep” in
the
Android world! So he’ll be extremely hard-pressed to find
anybody
who’ll build it for him within the budget he’s demanding.
I’ve worked with something called Delphi since Borland introduced
it
in 1995. Starting with the XE2 release a few years back, they’ve
been
embracing a multi-platform targeting strategy where you can
develop
apps in one language that will run on any of the popular
platforms:
Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. And it actually WORKS!
This is what we need - build once run everywhere. I personally
think web development is way behind in they types of tools we
have. I often wonder why we do not have something like VB that is
drag and drop. Instead we build everything every time. The web
dev model is very expensive.
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