Comment by austin-cheney

Comment by austin-cheney 2 days ago

The only purpose of software is automation, which is elimination of labor. Eliminating labor reduces expenses. While that is certainly valuable as it contributes toward profit it is not sales. Sales make money.

As a general rule profit is 10% of revenue and revenue is 10% of sales. Sales are the money paid by outside parties. Revenue is money left over after spending associated with sale acquisitions, for example after: marketing, merchandising, and advertising. Profit is money left over after accounting for internal expenses.

As such software never directly contributes toward sales unless software is a product directly sold to an outside party. The developers responsible for that software are virtually never responsible for sales generation even when that software product is directly sold to outside parties. The exception occurs when developers introduce a solution to a business problem into that software product and that solution becomes a direct point of merchandising.

As for the current capabilities of AI the LLM approach does not seem capable of writing original software. Most full stack developers are not writing original software though. The LLMs are already writing superior output with use of large frameworks to the extent that they can generate more efficient products and write the documentation sufficient to teach humans the approach to these large frameworks. Whether you should be worried then becomes a consideration of your employer’s perception of software authorship.

Cyberdog 2 days ago

I take incredible exception to what you are saying. What you are saying might be broadly correct for software as a whole, but not at all for web sites; most commercial web sites exist to drive sales, through advertising and promotion of products for sale if not actually selling the products. The largest client I've had for the past six years or so is a web site that makes revenue through advertising and subscription/premium account sales, so improving the site such that it draws in visitors, entices them to stick around and view ads, and encourages them towards ponying up for a premium account for access to more features is the motivation behind everything I do on it. Everything I do on that site is for the purpose of generating revenue. Another site I'm currently building is just a straight-up e-commerce site for specialized products. One I worked on in the past was a credit provider that specialized in loans for medical professionals and encouraged them to take on loans which in turn made the company profit in the form of interest. One major project I worked on early in my career was for a local newspaper that sold advertising and newspaper subscriptions. I could go on.

As for "original software," how are you defining that? Is software only original if it doesn't use any pre-existing frameworks? Okay, is it all right if I use a pre-existing programming language with a pre-existing standard library, or do I need to build my own? Is it all right if I host on a pre-existing VPS provider, or do I need to start my own hosting company? Can I host in pre-existing datacenters or do I need to build my own? Can I use pre-existing server hardware, or… At the end of the day all programmers who are getting anything practical done are using pre-existing tools at some level to solve their problems, often building new tools along the way. If I use the right tools for the job, build what my client wants, and keep end user experience in mind as much as possible (and I always do), then what's the problem?

Are you actually a web developer? Are you not passionate about it?

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austin-cheney 2 days ago

I was a full time JavaScript developer for 15 years. I still write personal software, but the corporate world killed my spirit for doing this for employment. I blame the exceptionally high insecurity of my prior developer peers, the extraordinary lengths businesses will go to in order to avoid correcting for that, and the diminishing expectations that follow. I will not go back to that. My own bias though is irrelevant to my comments here though as the identified trends and business terms apply the same irrespective of any such bias. Its all about the numbers.
As for advertising that is what's considered transactional revenue, or revenue generated upon the traffic from some other unrelated engagement. Nobody goes looking for advertisements intentionally. They just happen to appear on a site a user visits and eyeballs on that site thus generate revenue in consideration of some contracted term.
Transactional revenue is interesting because it generally has very low associated expenses which all associated revenue is far more closer aligned to profit. It is also insidious in that it tends to get in the way of what users actually want and will over time tank an associated product/brand unless the product/brand is so compelling that it drives substantial repeat traffic. That is the fundamental distinction between media and e-commerce. In media they can throw as many advertisements at you as they want because repeat traffic is deterministic and you are the product. With e-commerce, on the other hand, there exists actual products users must purchase. That purchase process is called conversion and over time advertisements erode the frequency of conversion. As conversion tanks over time users have less reason to access the associated website and so then advertising revenue also tanks.
With regards to sales and revenue developers still have no role in that relationship even in respective to advertisements and transactional revenue. Sales are literally money paid by an outside party directly to your business. Transactional revenue is indirect so it does not qualify as a sale. Even if it did quality the sales people are the ones negotiating the corresponding contracts and revenue terms, which is still not the developer.
I once wrote an advertising pop under for Travelocity from the homepage. The change in presence increased ad click-through impressions upon that placement from 0.3% to approx 14% at approximately 1.1 million page impressions per day. That is a massive revenue boost, but the customers hated it. Part of the massive traffic increase was change of visibility and part of it was content intentionally shifting low quality traffic off site. Stuff like that really killed the business.

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- meiraleal 2 days ago
  
  > Its all about the numbers.
  It is all about the numbers you like, it seems. Developers sell too, a good % of successful software is created and marketed by a single person. It seems like you can't or couldn't sell while developing. Your achievement was to be a cost center for 15 years and it shaped your vision of the whole profession.
  
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