[throwup238]

That's what dev kits are in electronics. They usually even come with schematics/PCB layouts so an engineer can quickly copy a working design and remove the stuff they don't need. There's still a huge gulf between those prototypes and production and there's plenty of mistakes to make requiring multiple revisions.

[b112]

It was the same end-position prior to internet publishing of software.

No updates. No bugfixes. What you pressed to CD (as much as a buck per CD qty 1000), was what your customers got. Period.

And it hurt to republish, because those updates were via mail. The box/sleeve, the labelling, the labour, the shipping.

DEVs today have no idea how easy their push is.

Get it right or you fail.