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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

You know what, this is a wonderful age we live in. A 13 year old kid can make money off iOS apps, at 17 they can make serious money.

When I was a kid the best I could do was have opensource stuff out there used by thousands of people. Personal gratification was high, but my wallet never got anything out of that, there just weren't any decent distribution channels for non-free stuff. And this was less than ten years ago.

Kudos to the kid!

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A wonderful age indeed. I see building apps becoming the new "lemonade stand" for kids.

... there's slightly more work involved in one of those things.

Indeed, those lemons don't cut themselves and have you seen the price of sugar these days?

Fair enough, I have no idea how to work a chainsaw.

No doubt there is more opportunity today than before as the Internet has grown, but 15 years ago, I got my start as a young teenager selling shareware, which was quite common back then. I don't have any data on this right now, but I bet the economics of it was better back then for the little guy too because there was so little competition versus the millions of apps out there now. I made more money back then selling shareware than 99% of people do now selling apps.

Well back when I was a teenager nobody even implanted the idea that "Hey, you can sell this stuff you know?" in my head. I just did it because it was fun and everyone else was doing it for free, so I did as well.

It took me ages to realise that you don't have to just give your software away for free and that is fine too.

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