Finding more and more on projects that, old fashioned admins are less useful and you need developers to script server installations and automate the infrastructure. Whole new area its quite exciting.
Javascript interpreter wars are awesome keep getting more innovation, I'm happily using Node.js for my servers now. Its pretty cool the Mozilla guys are using some of the webkit javascript engine, talk about collaboration.
That's precisely what makes free/open source software so interesting. You can compete, of course, but you also are free to build upon the work of others, to borrow ideas and code and then run in a different direction and see how far you can get.
I miss the hardware diversity of the 80's, but there are exciting times for software folks.
First JRuby guys to Engine yard, now Tim. Sun is losing a lot of good people. Now I wonder how the main ordinary developers are doing there ;/ Can't be a fun place right now
I think it's safe to say that Sun no longer exists:
% curl -I http://www.sun.com/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: Sun-Java-System-Web-Server/7.0
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:16:46 GMT
P3p: policyref="http://www.sun.com/p3p/Sun_P3P_Policy.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADMa DEVa TAIa PSAa PSDa CONi TELi OUR SAMi PUBi IND PHY ONL PUR COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL PRE GOV"
Location: http://www.oracle.com
Content-length: 0
Somehow, I have trouble feeling the same sense of sympathy for Oracle at the moment.
It was the sales people taking over that killed Sun, IMHO, so it seems likely to hasten the demise of Oracle when they get there and start celebrating in earnest. Since most hackers don't have much love for Oracle, I guess it won't be too upsetting to see it happen.
I don't it helps that most startups here in NYC are pretty lame, ripoffs of yelp or really weak ideas. I have been very unimpressed and stayed away from both startups and wall st.
I work for a startup in New York. We have a really cool idea, but raising money has been a bitch and a half. We've decided to bypass the VCs almost entirely and focus on customers.
In my opinion, this is exactly what you should do! Build a really great product and perhaps even become profitable on your own before you try to take on capital.
Isn't this good though? If the problem is the 'deluge of shovel-ware' then having all of these third parties not being unable to turn a respectable profit with them is good news. It's capitalism at work, right? You make no money on crappy games so you stop making crappy games.
Though, I suspect they do actually make money on the Wii. The sheer number of crappy games coming out for the Wii would indicate that the 'market' believes these crappy games will sell enough to get a decent ROI.
This leaves one of two possibilities:
A) You made up your previous fact.
B) These third parties are all to dumb to realize that making these games isn't making them any money.
C) The profitability of these games are reliant on a unsustainable pattern, or by itself contributes negatively to sustained profit. Say you were a knockoff manufacturer for expensive watches, and you were for some reason able to get your goods into the official distribution channel for real watches - this is an extremely profitable situation for you. Then everyone figures out how you're making money hand over fist and starts doing it too, and soon consumer confidence in the quality of the watches drops through the floor, and nobody (real or knockoff) makes any money. This is a very real possibility Nintendo faces. The profitability of shovelware relies on consumer confidence of products in the channel in general, and the market has a definite carrying capacity for shit games - exceeding this risks the viability of the platform entirely.
