Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

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> Without sounding like every other developer who hates on electron, I would really appreciate an http client with a Gui that was lighter, like iced or slint.

How much would you be willing to pay for such a client?

I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know, because as an independent developer, every single time I suggest a native application using native widgets to a client, they choose the HTML interface rather than a Qt or similar based interface.

The easily doable pretty animations in CSS in a 800MB-in-RAM-while-running application is, to paying clients, preferable than a 50MB-in-RAM-while-running that doesn't have the fancy spinning, tilting, animated wizz-bangs.

I have been writing software professionally since the mid-90s; I can do you a quick GUI-based cross-platform HTTP send+receive application based on libcurl in about 2 weeks. Looking at the minimum I need to make to pay my bills, I need purchasers paying a cumulative 1000USD for this effort, so 10x buyers @ $100, or 100 buyers @ $10, and so forth.

And, of course, I'd expect to only be able to sell it for a short while, if it is popular, until a clone starts up with $40k worth of SEO and advertising money.

The software you want can be had, and the skill to make it exists, in a timeframe that is feasible, but the economics are just not there.

This is a good business perspective, but I don’t really see why this couldn’t be someone’s open source passion project. The comment wasn’t really implying that they needed a paid tool, just a tool that suits their needs and is lightweight. Plenty of the software I use on a daily basis is open source software where you could argue that the economics shouldn’t have been there.

> Plenty of the software I use on a daily basis is open source software where you could argue that the economics shouldn’t have been there.

Me too. But the problem with "the economics just aren't there" means that if I cannot get, just from word-of-mouth (say, a Show HN post) 100 users @ $10 once-off lifetime purchase, then this is not a product that is in demand anyway. An open-source/free product that is exactly the same would similarly receive no love from users.

IOW, if not enough users exist for this product at $10, not enough users exist for this product at $0. Your passion product will still result in the dev burning out on the fact that no one wants their passion enough.

Doesn’t that depend on the buyer? I can think of several products that I would only use if free, and would go without if it was $1, $5, or $10. E.g. todo list apps, time tracker apps, budgeting apps.

I think you can argue that, if you have enough demand at $10, that you’ll have enough at $0, but I don’t see how not having demand at $10 implies that you won’t have demand at $0, since usually making something cheaper can change buyer’s minds.

> Doesn’t that depend on the buyer? I can think of several products that I would only use if free, and would go without if it was $1, $5, or $10. E.g. todo list apps, time tracker apps, budgeting apps.

My point is not that the user would go without. My point is that if your product is not desirable or differentiated enough that enough people would pay $10 for it, then making it free won't help because it will be lost in a sea of clones that already existed before you even started working on your product.

After all, look at your list - todo list apps, time tracker apps and budgeting apps; you cannot, in the sea of free competition right now, deliver a desirable enough app in any of those classes, unless it provides so much value over and above the others that many people are willing to shell out $10 for it.

IOW, if the product does not provide enough value for some people to pay $10 for it, making it $0 won't make a difference because it doesn't provide anything over and above the entrenched free offerings.

You see the problem in your comment:

why this couldn’t be SOMEONE’S ELSE passion project

HTML/CSS can still be used for the frontend even without Electron. Some frameworks use the OS bundled web renderer instead:

- For Rust apps: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

- For Go apps: https://github.com/wailsapp/wails

I think you can also easily do the pretty animations in a 50mb in ram "native" application

Yes, you can, especially if you use Qt with QML like I do[1][2][3].

[1] https://rubymamistvalove.com/blog/orchids.mp4

[2] https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor

[3] https://www.get-notes.com/

Wow! The blog post was an inspiring read. Thank you for showing what’s possible.

I'm glad to hear that, thanks!

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