Our app is used by remodelers and construction folks to run their businesses- accounting, estimating, project management, billing, payroll. It's big- kinda like FileMaker, plus QuickBooks, plus a bit of Excel, plus a drawing window for customizing. It took about 15 programmer-years for version 1.0, then another 5 to get it really good. It's too big, but people need it all to run their biz.
There are a few similar apps on Windows, but we have the only one for Mac. I don't think anyone else on Mac does payroll- which is insanely complicated. A few thousand users. We run the TurtleSoft business with it, plus another which is paying the bills right now. You can download our demo and take a look, if you want. If anyone wants to see the stalled Cocoa beta I can send it. We are remodelers who learned to program Excel, then HyperTalk, then C++, usually just working part-time at it. I'm sure we aren't rock stars as programmers, but we managed to ship some decent apps. There were 2 or 3 programmers on staff for most of the 90s. Mostly just founders and subcontractors since then. We started the 64-bit update in 2013 and not before because construction was hit very hard by the recession. 2008 to 2011 sales dropped 50% each year, so it was major downsizing. We tried to subcontract the Cocoa update, but 4 different contractors tried it, realized they grossly underbid and gave up. Here's a rough programmer-month breakdown for the entire 64-bit update, spread out over 5 years: Complete object database rewrite- 4 months + 2 months debugging Remove PowerPlant, rewrite LArray, misc updating to 64-bit and modern C++ - 6 months Find subcontractors, negotiate, test, etc- 4 months Convert resources from ResEdit to modern formats- 1 month Learn Objective-C, Cocoa and Swift- 4 months Main window setup, files, C++ to Obj-C links, Cocoa basics- 4 months Ditto in Visual Studio/MFC- 1 month Redo & improve main window design in MFC & Cocoa- 3 months Get various Excel-like tables to work with NSTableView- 6 months Revise table data entry to use panels because tables still didn't work right- 1 month Redo drawing environment for customizing- 1 month (gave up, sample project too old) Debug mystery crashes in Cocoa- 3 months Specialty windows & misc- 4 months (still not done) The first 10 years were a blast-- rapid growth, excellent cash flow, lots of travel, teaching clases, spending time with users and other developers. Then Apple hit the wall and it was 5 years of barely hanging on. Then 5 years of excellent cash flow again. The past 10 years have just been eking and hard work, thankfully not full-time. Hopefully we'll get a cash cow back at some point, so it's fun again. Casey McDermott TurtleSoft.com On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 3:21 PM Laurent Daudelin <laur...@nemesys-soft.com> wrote: > You know, I was thinking the same when Casey mentioned how long it was > taking to convert their app to Cocoa... > > -Laurent. > -- > > On Nov 13, 2019, at 14:38, Gary L. Wade via Cocoa-dev < > cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > If it takes you that long, then you need to hire new developers rather > than wasting your time posting complaints on an email list. > -- > Gary L. Wade > http://www.garywade.com/ > > On Nov 13, 2019, at 11:32 AM, Turtle Creek Software via Cocoa-dev < > cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > We have to plan 5 or 10 years ahead, because it takes that long to create > an app and sell it for long enough to get payback. > > > _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
