[stuff4ben]

As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities. Put a shiny GUI on it and I'd probably reconsider. Plus command line applications are not user friendly (especially Windows based ones) and take more effort to run than a nice clickable icon and GUI. My suggestion, either give it away for free or develop it to a point where you can add a GUI to it (shouldn't be hard with a couple hours of C#) and then charge for it. I wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars for something so basic though. $25 is way too much.

[mahmud]

As a general rule, I don't pay for command line utilities.

Thank goodness it's only you. I made a decent living writing database archiving tools as CLI utilities because the vendor supplied GUIs weren't scriptable.

[petercooper]

That's the sort of stuff technical folks want to be able to use (and script) from the command line. This guy has written an app for people who are into guns.

[jamesbritt]

"This guy has written an app for people who are into guns."

How many gun owners do you know? I know a bunch. They're an odd group, insomuch as they are not as simple to peg as some might think.

Sure, some are Dukes of Hazzard beer swilln' hicks, but others are top-grade software developers, teachers, and engineers.

I'm skeptical about selling CLI apps in general, but I don't think it's made any better or worse when targeting gun owners.

(To the original poster: go grab JRuby and Monkeybars and bang out a cross-platform GUI version!)

[xenophanes]

Quit being offended. If we take "gun owners" to mean "people completely at random" (i.e. no prejudice) then what he said is true. Random people don't like CLIs. Random people are completely different than people who want to write database archiving scripts. Script writers like CLIs better.

[jamesbritt]

"Quit being offended."

Who was offended? Not me. I'm pointing out a false view of gun owners. If Peter had in fact said "people completely at random" or "but they're not geeks", that would haven fine.

But emphasizing gun ownership as if it were particularly relevant (e.g., they are more likely than people completely at random to have trouble with the CLI) is bogus.

Oh, and quit being touchy. :)

[petercooper]

You're right, but to be fair, James read my implication quite well. I was having a tiny dig at gun nuts - not from any realistic experience but mostly because I'm European and I'm culturally supposed to look at gun-toters with disdain ;-)

[bdotdub]

The difference is that you're the target demographic for those database archiving tools: people who know how to use a command line.

Most likely the potential customers buying the app he built are people who don't know what a command line is.