Others might (or might not) notice it, but the important thing is competence always gives you more options, more freedom in situations, in that sense you become "someone". Whatever other people might call it depends on culture, language, and so many factors.
Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing? From my experience looking at bootcamp students, grasping programming is still nothing short of a mind switch that some are unable to do (regardless of if they have an LLM to assist, that tends to make it worse)
> Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing?
Not OP, but if you wanna get an idea for how much of a barrier there was 30 years ago... Just look through a few shareware CDs. So much crap was hastily thrown together by someone who read a beginner book on Hypercard or Visual Basic - and you'd have to mail $10 to an address, hope they hadn't moved, and that your floppy wouldn't get lost in the mail.
The general shittiness of most software back in the 90s is still a bit nostalgic IMO. It felt like software that was written by actual people instead of a faceless corporation
It appears that the cost of referral is much higher than it used to be. Fifty years ago, you might have looked in a phone book for companies that offer the service you are looking for, or gotten a recommendation from a friend. Everything was local, basically. I am not stating that this was necessarily better or game-theoretically optimal, but when the alternative is paying a large share to a big corporation for suggesting an option not based on merit, but the highest bid in a micro-auction, something tells me things have been going in the wrong direction in this case.
Seems like you are assuming they sold the books to cover their monthly burn. But seems it was kept afloat due to donations more than due to inventory sales
My point was that this was indeed a vanity project by someone with more money than sense. At no point does it seem like they had any business plan or conception of how to make money from actually operating the business. It's just cosplaying.
It is rather objectionable to label people with your assumptions. Unless you have some inside information you are just making shit up based on your own judgemental bigotry.
People start "hobby" businesses for many reasons, and those reasons are not always status oriented. All too often I've seen idealistic people with the best intentions crash into reality (often financial reality, but often other causes as in the article).
If you have 120k a year to burn on a "hobby business" I think it's pretty safe to say you're in the top 1%. Calling it a "donation" doesn't change that.
Honestly I think 80% of my users were because of my domain name. I knew people who need my product will search "AEO Check" or "AEO Checker" so I called my domain aeochecker.ai + the fact that this keyword is very low competition
Important point is: You become someone to others because of your competence.
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