Slashdot Mirror

I manage a small network for my parents. My dad is a lung doctor, and my mom is a nurse. I cannot get their current EHR system to run under Linux (WINE) and wasn't able to get their previous EHR to run under Linux either. So, for them, I do not save the thousands of dollars that were required to be spent when Windows XP was deprecated, and thousands of dollars again now that Windows 7 is approaching it's end-of-life because I cannot run one critical desktop application under Linux.

We evaluated OpenEHR. It would have required substantial modification to be able to collect, and present, patient data in the manner that would have been useful to their medical office. My software development company could have provided these modifications. As could another, more experienced, software development company that supports OpenEHR. We came to the conclusion that those modifications would be more expensive, and risky, than the commercial licensing, and constant Windows replacement costs. The commercial solution was ready, out of the box, and (not very well, but still) supported.

Until Linux offers better desktop application replacement support, there will be many corporate environments that depend on Windows application which cannot be migrated. WINE is not easy to get everything running under.

The software development company I use relied exclusively on Linux, and open-source software for our developments. However, that does not mean it is a good solution for everyone. Saying "everyone should use Linux" is just as wrong as saying "everyone should use Windows." There are different use cases for different technologies, and attempting to shoehorn everyone into a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't (in my experience) lead to a good outcome.

Agreed, there is no one perfect OS. They all have strengths, some have more weaknesses, a lot more. Appreciate the link to the office. You can almost make out the screen in the picture.

I manage a small network for my parents. My dad is a lung doctor, and my mom is a nurse. I cannot get their current EHR system to run under Linux (WINE) and wasn't able to get their previous EHR to run under Linux either. So, for them, I do not save the thousands of dollars that were required to be spent when Windows XP was deprecated, and thousands of dollars again now that Windows 7 is approaching it's end-of-life because I cannot run one critical desktop application under Linux.

We evaluated OpenEHR. It would have required substantial modification to be able to collect, and present, patient data in the manner that would have been useful to their medical office. My software development company could have provided these modifications. As could another, more experienced, software development company that supports OpenEHR. We came to the conclusion that those modifications would be more expensive, and risky, than the commercial licensing, and constant Windows replacement costs. The commercial solution was ready, out of the box, and (not very well, but still) supported.

Until Linux offers better desktop application replacement support, there will be many corporate environments that depend on Windows application which cannot be migrated. WINE is not easy to get everything running under.

The software development company I use relied exclusively on Linux, and open-source software for our developments. However, that does not mean it is a good solution for everyone. Saying "everyone should use Linux" is just as wrong as saying "everyone should use Windows." There are different use cases for different technologies, and attempting to shoehorn everyone into a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't (in my experience) lead to a good outcome.

I don't have to decide between guns or butter in my imagination. When I was young, I imagined cool robot friends and trips to other worlds. Now, I have a Roomba and travel internationally, but most technology that I imagine today involves clients and difficult trade-offs. My focus on imaginary technology now is limited by what I can have the company I own, sell to someone with money (no equity deals, please.) Children don't have the same practical concerns, and (thankfully, in my country) aren't worried about how feasible something is. There isn't much of a difference between science fiction, and fantasy, when you're young. If you come from a stable background, you can dream a lot when little.

Also thankfully, I never imaged how awesome financial technology could be when young. It's awfully nice having a visa card that works almost anywhere on earth, in any currency. I'm happy I didn't think about money when a little kid. The same for medical technology. I'm still happy no one in my party has died from dysentery, or a horse kick...

This question is really How limited of an imagination did you have when young, and how unrealistic and uneducated an understanding of technology do you have now?

Elon Musk is the exception. That guy builds some seriously cool stuff, about as cool as I imagined when I was little.

It was an app in Zoho Apps, and I migrated that app's functionality into their existing CakePHP application. It was basically a survey building tool for medical surveys, so we had to keep track of questions, responses, order between questions/sections, and the like. Pretty much basic CRUD was all Zoho handled for the survey building. The responses were handled by the custom application.

A company called iNetU that has been acquired like three times + name changes hosts their virtual server, and the company I own performed the rewrite.

Software developers are, by definition, more valuable than the money a company pays to employ them. This is also true of any employee. Unfortunately, the author of the article seems to not be aware of this basic economic trade-off. Someone that pays money for something values that thing more than then money they paid for it. This is probably the most fundamental principle of basic economic exchange.

I do actually think I have something else to add, besides a basic criticism of click-bait titles.

As someone that owns a software company, my company provides services that typically either replace, or supplement, internal development skills. We step in and work for our clients for a number of reasons. One reason is when an organization relies on custom software, but cannot manage the development process, typically through the work of a talented, previous, employee that has since left the company where no one in management had any idea of what they actually did, but they rely on it. Another common reason is that the clients cannot actually pay for a W2 employee to do the work. We are able to charge at least 2x as much as an employee, but since we need to work half the time (either through efficiencies, or because they simply do not have full time work available), this is typically a cost savings. Usually, there is some combination of lack of development/management skill, and cost savings, which is why it makes sense to "outsource" to a U.S. based company, as opposed to developing software skills in-house.

So, I feel push back on price when selling sometimes. Often times, organizations will simply leave a position empty than pay the 2-3x contractor rates needed to fill these positions, immediately, with me and my team. For those people, developers are NOT worth more than 2-3x an employee rate. They ARE worth the somewhat inflexible price range their HR department is looking to fill people into.

I own a custom software development company. We accept money to turn vaporware into real software. Money is very useful for turning one thing into another, and was invented for exactly that purpose. Barter has many inefficiencies, and I prefer to use money rather than goodwill, community, equity, animals, vegetables, sexual favors, or IOUs, for creating software.

As someone that owns a software company, I am constantly attempting to push my customers towards proactive, forward thinking maintenance. It's not like CTOs, executives, and decision makes are dumb. Many times organizations are aware of systemic problems, and they would prefer to be in a break-fix model than a preventative maintenance model. Decision makers have to balance allocation of resources to different projects, and if something is presently working, why spend the resources to ensure that it continues to work? This is one approach. Additionally, I've seen IT professionals scoff at anyone with technical skills AND an ability to get their ideas into motion, and move money towards their ideas ("sales" / "suits.")

Another approach is taken by companies with successful products, big teams, very cheap costs of capital, that are sitting on tons of cash. Those companies are able to invest tremendously into forward thinking projects, and have redundancy at all levels of their organization, and can afford to fail proactively rather than reactively. My friend at Google said for every code change he makes, two other engineers have to sign off on his code, and it has to run through a battery of automated tests before it is (carefully, and reversibly) integrated into production. I think this is the other extreme from my experience in developing, and supporting, software in New Mexico.

I don't think it makes sense to sit on an armchair, and discuss what "companies" should, and shouldn't do - unless you are employed by such a company either as a contractor, an employee, or own a fraction of that company and you have voting rights. I'm often times able to convince people to invest more into proactive solutions, especially after a predicted disaster that has been warned about repeatedly. Even without such a motivating disaster, I'm usually able to convince people to take some proactive steps, even if they're not willing to spend as much as I'd like to convince them to, or move as fast as I'd like.

Try convincing someone, (or yourself!) to go to the gym and you'll see what I mean with the difficulties in convincing organizations to spend money maintenance.

I don't think this is a good idea. As someone that owns a software company, I tell my clients when they have terrible ideas that we shouldn't do them. If they insist, without a good explanation, there are other people that are happy to work on stupid crap with disastrous long term consequences.

I have zero desire to work on accelerated mobile pages, and I think the performance benefits associated with them are far outweighed by the crappy solution of bizarre existing standards, caching problems, and all the other issues that have nothing to significantly offer my clients.

I am not writing content for the New York Times, or helping them with their infrastructure, so my perspective may be somewhat limited.

This is what happens when everyone that is given a participation trophy grows up. They try and change the use of language to remove the concept of failure.

There are many, many, many, times I failed. I tried to learn something from those failures, usually afterwards, with lots of retrospection, regret, and alcohol, but they were still complete and utter disasters. To call them a "pivot" is silly, even though they all involved major changes after the chips fell. This is both personally, and in terms of decisions I made for my software company.

I apologize - I was only able to make it through the first two paragraphs of this article before I was reminded of why I do not subscribe to the New York Times, and pivoted to writing a comment.

I own Noventum Custom Software. Noventum is a small company (me + 1 full time W2, and 3 part time 1099s) that offers software development services to others. This isn't exactly a high growth startup, but we do have two intellectual property projects we're working on (that customers paid for, which we own the IP.)

I have two rules:
        1.) Know how we're going to get paid before working on a software project, and where the money came from (past tense - already exists and can be talked about using concrete terms.)
        2.) Don't work with people with zero business experience, even if they meet the first criteria.

Our model is based on very low risk, slow growth, tried and true business practices. All of our customers are successful companies that have come to rely on custom software for their businesses to function, and it's immediately clear how they plan on paying us. Mine is not the kind of business that other people invest in, or that brings a brand new, innovative, product to market quickly. I am building a team, and involved in activities that I believe will help me with the skills needed to actually have a product.

So, for you, what I would recommend is to start contracting, and gain business experience. If you're able to offer your services to others at hourly, or in fixed-rate, contracts you will start to develop all of the ancillary skills that are related to selling software, which are only tangentially related to the actual coding. There are many such skills, with the primary one being sales. Unless your organization has some ability to sell, it won't really matter how awesome your product is if no one knows about it, no one is buying it, and you have to work another job to pay your bills. Also correctly paying taxes, and managing the books for a business is another skill that I wish I was better at. Aesthetics are another skillset that I lack - it's important to make things look nice. All of these skills take time to develop, or even to be able to evaluate in others. If you have a mountain of cash, you'll burn through it learning what it means to manage salespeople, designers, and accountants, unless you have some skill in these areas.

The three successful product companies I've worked with/for all began contracting. This allowed them to get paid to learn their customers' needs, since the customers would then sign a contract with them to have these needs met. This is the approach I recommend.

I am also from New Mexico. Culturally, we don't look highly upon the 18 companies that VCs fund that go broke in order for there to be one home run. This model is not attractive to me, even if I understand the basic mathematics behind it, and consider it an effective method of wealth generation. Depending on your values, geographic location, tolerance for risk, and perception of the passage of time, there may be a better path than contracting for you.

I have multiple batteries for my laptop and cell phone. Typically, what I'll do is bring as many batteries as is feasible (usually three for my laptop and four for my phone) and fish while writing software. Fishing requires very little active concentration, and it's nice to be able to write code while outside. Most of my trips are not very far from my car though.

Occasionally I'll go on backpacking trips that aren't car-accessible. I have not yet tried to work from one of these trips. I've been looking into the Goal Zero Voltage Inverter and their lightweight solar panels. If I do go this route, I'll likely start out with the solar panel + phone recharger, see how that works, and then get the more expensive voltage inverter and battery. I think it really depends on if you'll have a car available or not. If you have your car, you already have a power generator and the ability to haul heavy stuff.

I own my own software company, so as long as I'm decently responsive I can work from wherever. I kind of agree that for most people going out into nature is a way to not have to focus on those types of concerns. For me, I like being able to work from wherever in the event that I have to pack up and get out quickly.

I think I will get a portable solar cell phone charger, so I can charge my phone from wherever. I live in New Mexico, and the sun in always shining here. There are times when I forget to charge my phone enough, and I'm sitting in my car with the car running so my phone would charge. It would be nice to throw up my solar dash mat, run a wire into my glove box, and put my phone in there while I go inside someplace to do errands.