[spoonjim]

Yes, that young, entrepreneurial programmer can be found, but won’t have the domain knowledge. Look at the examples above. You can’t sell Marine mapping software without knowing something about marine navigation. You can’t sell beekeeping software without understanding beekeeping. Plus you need the general business operation skills. Finding a programmer who knows beekeeping and wants to take on a low growth business is not as easy as finding a programmer on Upwork.

[lowercased]

Yep. There may be 'takers', but will the existing customers want to work with them? So many solo/indie niche packages are built on the relationships, and replacing those - and the trust around them - is hard.

A client told me about someone they knew who did ballroom dancing software - it kept track of competitions, standings, etc. And... it seemed like decent money, looking at the pricing, and the size of the market. But the market didn't seem big enough for multiple players, and everyone trusted/knew/used the one main player. If/when he goes (or perhaps already has), I'm sure people will find another way to manage their stuff, but before then... who's going to come in to a market like that? How do you 'beat' the incumbent? Lower price? Who would switch? How do you convince people to switch to something unknown, potentially losing years of data, having new training costs, to ... save a couple hundred bucks maybe?

I'm sure there's hundreds of these sorts of services out there that are surviving, but don't have a huge market for competition, because the barriers to entry are too high relative to the return.

[jaclaz]

Yes, but I was talking more about "passing on" the knowledge/experience (as opposed to losing it and start anew).

Regarding your "The One Way", sometimes that one way is actually the one that works better, as it was developed and fine tuned over the years by a dedicated programmer that had constant feedback by users.

Probably that ballroom dancing software had a way to input (or present/output) data in a form that makes sense to the users.

When suddenly comes the new (otherwise brilliant) programmer that - knowing nothing on the specific field - invents his/her own way to input data or render it that the users find awkward or slower or less intuitive or whatever, with the new program that cannot import old data (or imports partially), that cannot use the same B&W printer because the output is highlighted with colours and not with bolding/underlining, etc..

No surprise that the users of the old software (if it is still working) won't jump on the new bandwagon.

[airbreather]

But that is why there were apprentiships, and I have seen docos about Japanese solo or small workplace craftsmen who take on 70yo apprentices.

But it would need planning, and a certain class of able worker who is happy to not continually be dreaming about "changing the world".

But sometimes better is just keep persisting with what works, not everything is better disrupted.