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by mahmud 6219 days ago
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.
2 comments
petercooper 6219 days ago
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.
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jamesbritt 6219 days ago
"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!)

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xenophanes 6219 days ago
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.
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jamesbritt 6219 days ago
"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. :)

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petercooper 6212 days ago
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 ;-)
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bdotdub 6219 days ago
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.

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