Return of the homebrew coder

[R. A. Hettinga]

Geodesic software, anyone? :-)

Cheers,
RAH
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<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.


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'