The Economist on the "Return of the homebrew coder" · 161 words posted 03/15/2004 08:53 AM
This week’s Economist discusses shareware and the return of the homebrew coder (requires subscription)—developers who find the sweet spot in the software market for programs serving a niche of a few thousand people. The article features both Brent Simmons of Ranchero Software and Nick Bradbury of Bradsoft. According to the Economist, three trends make homebrew software an increasingly viable market niche:
- The proliferation of devices, each with a different API, any of which might or might not work natively with your other devices (thus creating markets for device-to-device software such as “VeriChat”:http://www.pdaapps.com/verichat/default.html);
- The ease with which developers can distribute and receive payment for their software via PayPal or “Kagi”:http://www.kagi.com; and
- Better tools, “which,” quoting the Economist, “make it easier for lone programmers to build complex software.”
There’s nothing groundbreaking in the article; still it’s nice to see great developers like Brent and Nick getting recognition in the mainstream press.
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