[hocwyn]

This is what my company is building on Urbit: https://uqbarnetwork.medium.com/introducing-uqbar-network-6b...

Having a large audience of pre-existing users is nice (and ditto for dev ecosystem for tooling and libraries) but ultimately what makes Urbit a good idea is, as Josh says, that we want computers to primarily be doing one set of things and they were originally designed to do a different set of things (with the things they currently do added as a complicated afterthought). A blockchain protocol is in the end a p2p application. It benefits hugely from running on a natively p2p networked operating system with a built-in cryptographic identity infrastructure. If Urbit's technology works, people are going to build on top of it because they need it, and their customers will come to use what they've built because it works better. If the tech didn't work, it wouldn't matter how many people tried it.

You're correct that there is no "Urbit Store" analogous to the Apple Store or the Android Store (this is a feature not a bug for many users, although I sympathize with both perspectives). I'm not sure what you mean about installing apps being arduous - currently you start typing the developer's name into the homepage search bar, it autocompletes, you are given a list of apps they've published, you click the one you're interested in, installation is a few seconds to a few minutes.

[dmitriid]

> I'm not sure what you mean about installing apps being arduous - currently you start typing the developer's name into the homepage search bar, it autocompletes, you are given a list of apps they've published, you click the one you're interested in, installation is a few seconds to a few minutes.

First, you have to know the developer's name, and then find the apps that developer produced. This is literally the opposite of what most people do: search for an app (not for a developer) and install it (or search for an app category, and install an app)

[hocwyn]

If this were really a huge part of most people's experience of Urbit (that they want to search apps by name rather than by developer) then it would be important to know. My company would be happy to curate a list of All The Apps, if someone convinced me this was the case. Browsing big tech App Stores is a huge pain and most people just follow a link from the developer's web page in practice, but since there are so many fewer Urbit apps browsing a complete list could potentially be high-impact.

My worry would be that "and I wasn't able to find the name of anyone who develops apps!" is complaint #10 on a list of complaints where ##1-9 mean these kinds of people are never going to use Urbit much anyway. In which case we'd have to put a certain amount of work into vetting all these apps and their updates and real users would still find apps the same way - clicking on links to apps their friends are recommending.

[dmitriid]

> If this were really a huge part of most people's experience of Urbit (that they want to search apps by name rather than by developer) then it would be important to know.

This is people's experience, period, not limited to Urbit.

> most people just follow a link from the developer's web page in practice

Or, rather from widely available lists of "10 best apps for X right now".

How do you expect anyone to find any apps in Urbit if there no sites to speak of and no lists of apps to speak of? Here was my experience trying Urbit out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124587

> is complaint #10 on a list of complaints where ##1-9 mean these kinds of people are never going to use Urbit much anyway.

Yes, it's possible number #10 on a list of complaints, but they are not in 1-2-3-...-10 order. It's all of them together.

Put yourself into the shoes of a person starting with Urbit. Download Port. And then tell me what exactly the new user is to do? Suddenly "it's not a huge part of people's experience on Urbit" becomes "the biggest part and the biggest part #1" because there's literally nothing there.