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Comment by e4m | Hacker News Reader

It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain, powder, etc. It's command line only. It's windows only. No GUI, but it's very simple to use and accurate. Very useful for folks who reload their own ammunition. Covers all calibers from smallest to largest.

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As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities. Put a shiny GUI on it and I'd probably reconsider. Plus command line applications are not user friendly (especially Windows based ones) and take more effort to run than a nice clickable icon and GUI. My suggestion, either give it away for free or develop it to a point where you can add a GUI to it (shouldn't be hard with a couple hours of C#) and then charge for it. I wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars for something so basic though. $25 is way too much.

As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities.

Thank goodness it's only you. I made a decent living writing database archiving tools as CLI utilities because the vendor supplied GUIs weren't scriptable.

The difference is that you're the target demographic for those database archiving tools: people who know how to use a command line.

Most likely the potential customers buying the app he built are people who don't know what a command line is.

That's the sort of stuff technical folks want to be able to use (and script) from the command line. This guy has written an app for people who are into guns.

"This guy has written an app for people who are into guns."

How many gun owners do you know? I know a bunch. They're an odd group, insomuch as they are not as simple to peg as some might think.

Sure, some are Dukes of Hazzard beer swilln' hicks, but others are top-grade software developers, teachers, and engineers.

I'm skeptical about selling CLI apps in general, but I don't think it's made any better or worse when targeting gun owners.

(To the original poster: go grab JRuby and Monkeybars and bang out a cross-platform GUI version!)

Quit being offended. If we take "gun owners" to mean "people completely at random" (i.e. no prejudice) then what he said is true. Random people don't like CLIs. Random people are completely different than people who want to write database archiving scripts. Script writers like CLIs better.

"Quit being offended."

Who was offended? Not me. I'm pointing out a false view of gun owners. If Peter had in fact said "people completely at random" or "but they're not geeks", that would haven fine.

But emphasizing gun ownership as if it were particularly relevant (e.g., they are more likely than people completely at random to have trouble with the CLI) is bogus.

Oh, and quit being touchy. :)

You're right, but to be fair, James read my implication quite well. I was having a tiny dig at gun nuts - not from any realistic experience but mostly because I'm European and I'm culturally supposed to look at gun-toters with disdain ;-)

Command line programs are not simple to use to anyone who is not a programmer. Wrap a GUI around it.

Shooting enthusiasts are willing to pay money for software. Brian Plexico once sold several thousand dollars worth of a program written in a week, which just recorded scores for skeet shooting. One of the keys was ease of use -- again, NOT a command line.

http://www.microisv.com/archives/2006/03/06/conception-to-sa...

It calculates trajectory, drop, etc of a bullet depending upon caliber, grain, powder

Talk with the old lady and put together a grand to take out an ad in Soldier of Fortune, then slap a big fat "Please see our ad in Soldier of Fortune" on your website.

SoF is such a highly coveted niche publication, the mention of its name is more profitable than the revenue generated from ads on it. "As Seen In Soldier of Fortune" has a nice ring to it, rhymes with "cha ching".

Again, Get it DONE!

You might get more money from making the application into a web application and getting commission from click-through sales of actual hardware.

Or you could try both... limit the web version some, and sell the desktop one.

It's a bullet trajectory calculator. Only way I can see this thing making money is if it was made into a pocket-calculator type of thing and mass produced in Guangdong China.

I can't say more than that I would certainly not buy one, nor even use a free one. But then again, I can say the same thing about a bingo card generator too. Also, it looks like he's not trying to make a living on it, but simply break even or make a bit of extra cash.

It sounds to me like it's intended for developing custom loads for guns, not calculating ballistics in the field. The target market would be handloaders who sometimes spend thousands of dollars on reloading equipment. An ad-supported web app or a paid GUI app would be very viable.

It sounds to me like this would be a good candidate for an iPhone and BlackBerry app. How many people shoot guns when they're sitting in front of the computer (other than us developers)? ;)

How many people who make their own ammunition also own an iPhone ? Perhaps a dozen, and that's optimistically :-)

You can get a 50k GUI with FLTK in less than half an hour, and it compiles to a static binary. The API is at about the same "complexity" as Tk and the bloody thing is in C++.

Get Dev-Cpp; click Tools -> Check for Updates -> [scroll around to find a recent FLTK devpak -> Select -> Download.

Restart FLTK and New -> Project -> GUI -> FLTK.

Get it done!

Wow... thank you very much! I've never heard of this library. Looks ideal. I really do appreciate it. I've been struggling with WX.

There is even GUI4CLI, which is a wrapping scripting language which generate GUIs for CLI utilities. It's used by Avanti, which is a GUI for ffmpeg and avisynth. It's about the same complexity as a clean tiny, basicish, shellish pascal:

http://gui4cli.com/html/interface.htm

But FLTK will have better integration.

What about making it an iPhone/Android/similar application? I envision people using it not just when reloading, but at the range, when buying ammo at the store, etc. I may be completely off in my opinion, but it seems the kind of thing that aficionados would drop a few bucks on. Some for making actual decisions; others to use as an adjunct/reference in conversation. And those phones are becoming a vast marketplace. For those using it for real work, other than reloaders, it would also place it at their disposal where they most need it: In the field.

Downside: Less of a percentage as your take. Upside: You're not hosting the store.

iPhone app; for some reason I don't think the intersection between gun owners and iphone owners is big enough to justify the cost of development.

got any research to back that up?

I said "I think", i.e. my opinion.

But my idea of iphone owners is that they're "muggable", while gun owners are "unfuckwithable". See "ipod mugging" in google.

ipod(n): iphone without GSM chip.

I'd like to hear more on this cost of development. The biggest cost would be buying the developers license. His algorithms are already written, so it's just porting them to Objective C and slapping a Cocoa Touch interface to it (which shouldn't take more than a day, soup to nuts with no Cocoa experience). Plus you get the added benefit learning a useful SDK.

I'd like to hear more on this cost of development.

The cost of picking up a new platform to learn. The cost of hours spent kluding an iphone development environment on whatever his current desktop is. The cost of writing said app. The cost of submitting it to Apple and waiting for how ever long it takes for approval. The cost of time spent polishing the site so it fits with the glossy, round-cornered aesthetic of the iPhone (possibly learning a graphics package or hiring a designer.) The cost of waiting for the pennies to trickle in from the huge user base of gun-owning, bullet property measuring, badass iphone users who don't know of crackz sites.

The biggest cost would be buying the developers license.

That and the small issue of having to get a Mac if not already owned...

I am seeing iPhones all over the place, here in the Chicagoland area. And I'm seeing a lot of them in the hands of people I would hardly call technologists.

I think that someone who is ready to drop significant change (money) on on guns and other shooting accessories (which aren't cheap), particularly as a shooting hobby, would be plenty willing and able to spend a bit extra for a smartphone. The phones have so many other uses; I imagine they, or rather their format and capabilities, are going to become standard fare within a couple of years (with the current economic "repression" being perhaps the biggest unknown factor in this evolution).

Also, many shooters are technologists, if of a different flavor. A lot of time and attention paid to materials, workmanship, and performance. The leap to an iPhone or similar may be less of a gap in terms of mindset than might be imagined. If it's a good and useful tool, they will appreciate it.

In short, many shooters may have the phones already, before too long. A few might be nudged into the addition expense by the availability and utility of applications such as this -- though I wouldn't count on such conversions of themselves for generating a significant market for the application.

I don't know whether it makes sense for the original poster to go this route. It obviously would involve significant additional time and effort towards learning the environment and porting the application. Also some significant expense for the development environment. On the other hand, I -- again, just off the top of my head, or perhaps out of my other end ;-) -- imagine real potential in the resulting marketplace to which the application would have exposure.

I could be quite wrong, but I'm throwing the idea out there for consideration/conversation.

Bad form, perhaps, to keep responding to myself. But, where I used the word "shooters", consider also hunters. A real need to know trajectory under varying circumstances. Also a strong interest in location and orientation, where a smartphone GPS and onscreen mapping would be quite useful. Mapping of various sorts, including not just satellite and topo, but even property ownership; if you are hunting on private land or need to avoid straying onto same, it is useful -- perhaps critical -- to know the boundaries.

This isn't all in place, yet, in a convenient fashion. But I can imagine it falling into place.

You need your phone with you, anyway, if nothing else then for use in case of accident, injury, getting lost, vehicle failure, etc. If it can do all these other things for you, well, that's the cat's meow.

If my imagination bears any resemblance to what evolves, it would seem to me to be a pretty decent market to sell into.

If going with the iPhone/Android app what would your pricing strategy be? Charge more seemed to be a popular answer for a desktop app. Does this still hold with the online market place that allows users to more easily comparison shop?

It can't be that hard to slap a GUI on it with something like Tk, and that would probably make it a lot more attractive to people.

It's C++. I do have a GUI written using WXwidgets, but it's only 75% done. I thought I'd try to sell the CLI version first and if it is popular and pays for itself somewhat, then finish the GUI as I could then justify it with the wife.

My guess is that it's not so linear - you might not sell any copies at all of a command line thing, and a bunch once you get even a simple GUI on it.

Wrap a GUI around it and package the program as a single executable. I'd suggest $15. Asking for $20 seems like too much (to me), but I've been told that I have bad judgement in such matters. :)

Also, I agree with others that trying to sell a CLI version will probably go nowhere. In fact, it may stifle adoption after you switch to the GUI version (since prospective users might think "Oh, that's that terminal program, right? Yuck!").

Stick a dead-simple UI on it. Assume domain knowledge, not computer knowledge; this should be dead simple to an experienced handloader who barely knows how to use a computer. My dad would buy it, and probably shell out $50 if there's a reasonable demo so he can see what he's missing.

A friend of mine once wrote a shooting match scoring / ranking program for Palm PDAs. He had a hard time getting people to actually pay for it. But then again, he wasn't selling on the web.

Amen on the GUI comments. Other than that, how would the program go as a value-add to manufacturers of specific supplies and/or equipment? If it helps increase sales and/or help people achieve increased accuracy and/or grouping then maybe some such suppliers might be prepared to have you brand the program for them to sell at gun shops.

Can I buy one?

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