On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Steve Obbayi <steve@sobbayi.com> wrote:
To all those who are against reinventing the wheel, i will give you a simple illustration:
Take these two apps: for those who have been around since the early days of mysql, remember "mysql front". this App was the main interface to the mysql database but thank God for Indians. they went ahead and developed "mysqlyog". years later mysql front couldn't compete simply coz these indian fellows reinvented the wheel and gave us mysqlyog. These two applications did exactly the same thing but mysqlyog capitalized on mysql fronts weaknesses. They turn to development on win32 api an produced a lighter and faster front end to mysql. eventually almost everyone stopped using mysql front and turned to mysqlyog. i dont thinks its in production any more
@Steve, I agree with you 100% that we at some stage need to take the code bull by the horns and re-write and contribute towards the larger code community. We all need to re-write apps from scratch to put our stamp on the map.
What I did realise from yesterday's contributions was that there was a serious incentive problem and mostly , if not all, coders are dependent on what clients want. Economics and lack of financial support/self financial support, marketing, availability, client pressure to be as free as possible cost wise, smaller modules approach is what is driving kenyan coders not to do more.
I think Murigi brought out what may be the most important , i.e the lack of success of fully commercial apps is due to SOLO approaches. I can also fully relate to his approach and I think many others too. Though am still a learner , I can already see there are many obstacles ahead. For me as of now, the target is to develop a serious software/web development company within the next 2 years or start a training academy/school for budding programmers with involvement from other senior kenyan programmers/retired programmers.
I now see the solution as this :
- For the first 2 years, software developers/coders need to get together very frequently in mashups/commercial mashups. We need to start defining what the mashups are about. The main core are the 4 major programming languages so each mashup will be different. These mashups meets are not about competing but about coming together ( even via mail, messenger etc ) and adopting various strategies and ideas. These mashups can also be used as a web/software developer business meet, where clients can table projects while the mashups target to complete them commercially.
- Software/web developers association within 2-4 years, runs parallel with mashups. Creation of this is critical, and code/business lessons learned from mashups will allow some financial contributions to go to the asociation to start of a developer community re-write code. This will allow upcoming coders to get involved in re-write projects while also put the association on the map and hopefully marketing itself to get funding towards its code re-write goals.
Either way, we are all stagnant with SOLO approaches and I think there is no harm in first attempting the frequent mashups/commercial mashups. Can we make this happen? If we start today, a year from now we maybe looking back at a very successful startup and wondering why this was not done. Incase it fails, at least we shall have learnt why and try a better approach.
Those with experience with mashups, kindly share your thoughts.
Me thots. :-)