Geodesic software, anyone? :-) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2476892> The Economist MONITOR Return of the homebrew coder Mar 11th 2004

From The Economist print edition

Software: Most modern software is written by huge teams of programmers. But there is still room for homebrew coders, at least in some unusual niches BEFORE Henry Ford unleashed the practice of mass production on the world, every little town had a few dozen artisans who made the lives of citizens easier. A cobbler made the shoes, a tailor sewed suits and a carpenter built furniture. Mass production sounded the death knell for many specialist craft jobs, and the rise of computerised supply chains finished off most of the rest. But now, a century later, the trend is reversing itself. The new craftsmen do not stitch leather, cut cloth or saw wood: instead, they write software. This is because, as digital gizmos proliferate, consumers are running into some niggling problems. How can you synchronise a Sony Ericsson smartphone with a Macintosh computer running Microsoft's Entourage software? How do you send instant messages from your PocketPC or Palm handheld? How do you maintain a weblog quickly and easily? Such difficulties are typically faced by just a few thousand people with specific and unusual requirements-too few to merit the attention of the big computer firms, but enough to provide opportunities for a growing band of homebrew coders who set out to develop niche products. In many cases these programmers are making a decent living in the process, thanks to the availability of high-speed internet connections, cheap web-hosting services and online-payment systems such as PayPal and Kagi-all of which make it quick and easy to distribute software and collect money from customers. The trend is also a response to the sorry state of the technology industry, following the bursting of the dotcom bubble. Where they could once command salaries of $100,000, programmers now worry about their jobs disappearing to India. So instead of waiting for things to improve, some have decided to strike out on their own. Brent Simmons is one such programmer. With the help of his wife, he runs Ranchero Software from his garage in Seattle. They make a clever piece of software called NetNewsWire, which runs on the Mac OS X operating system and makes it easy to read news and then post comments on to a weblog. "I like being able to design and implement software and have the final say," says Mr Simmons. "It's a higher level of creativity than working on someone else's software. I get to refine and market my own ideas." At $40 each, Mr Simmons needs to sell 2,000 copies of his program each year to earn what he would be paid as an employee elsewhere. Jonas Salling of Salling Software in Stockholm, meanwhile, has attracted a loyal following for his handy software utilities. One allows data from Microsoft's Entourage personal-information manager for Macintosh computers to be transferred to Sony Ericsson smartphones. The other allows such phones, and certain Palm handhelds, to be used as wireless remote-controls via a Bluetooth link. So you can, for example, advance slides in a presentation by clicking on your phone's keypad. The number of people who actually want to do this is quite small, but they want to do it enough to pay Mr Salling $10 for his software, which has won several awards. Even more successful are Gaurav Banga and Saurabh Aggarwbi, based in Sunnyvale, California. They sell VeriChat, a nifty piece of software that allows people to send and receive instant messages on smartphones, or on PocketPC and Palm handheld computers. VeriChat is sold on a subscription basis, and brings in $20 per user per year, collected via PayPal. The company's sales are expected to reach $1m this year. Another homebrew coder is Nick Bradbury, who lives in Franklin, Tennessee. He wrote one of the first web-publishing tools, called HomeSite, and sold it to Allaire, which is now part of Macromedia. Then he started Bradbury Software, which sells a web-page editor called TopStyle and a news-reading program called FeedDemon. Self-employment, he notes, has more than just financial benefits. "I put in more hours, but those hours are very flexible, which in my case means I can spend a great deal of time with my two kids," he says. And he finds it very rewarding to know that his software is making people's lives a little easier-"something I rarely, if ever, experienced while working in the corporate world." The phenomenon of the homebrew coder is not new, of course. For two decades, programmers have distributed their wares as "shareware", initially through dial-up bulletin boards or via disks given away with computer magazines, and later via the internet. People can try a piece of software free of charge, and then send a cheque to its creator if they want to continue using it. This often entitles them to a registration code that unlocks extra features. But online payment services such as PayPal and Kagi have simplified and sped up the payment process, making the shareware model far more attractive for programmers. "Software developers are essentially cutting out the traditional distribution channels, which are not efficient," says Kee Nethery, the founder of Kagi, who has noticed a growing number of independent software developers collecting money using his firm's service. Mr Bradbury also points to improvements in development tools, which make it easier for lone programmers to build complex software, and to a growing number of niche markets, as programmable devices such as smartphones proliferate. While new opportunities abound, however, this world of independents is an unforgiving meritocracy. For homebrew coders, the fact that their fortunes depend directly on the quality of their products is both the risk and the reward. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'