Why 10 hours for a newbie and 30 days for a "programmer"

[Dan Shafer]

On Sep 3, 2004, at 8:08 AM, Kirk McElhearn wrote:

> On 9/3/04 4:54 PM, "Dan Shafer" <revdan at danshafer.com> wrote:
>
>>> Education is the largest market Rev—or HyperCard, etc.—will ever 
>>> serve
>>> and hope to make large inroads.
>>>
>> I hope not. The company will be out of business if that's the case. As
>> far as I know, there is not one company today making significant money
>> serving the education market with software, let alone programming
>> software.
>
> I can think of one off the top of my head: Inspiration
> (www.inspiration.com), who makes outlining/mind-mapping software.

Yeah, I know about Inspiration. But they are a VERY small company, much 
too small to support a full-blown development tool like Rev.

(FWIW, I *love* Inspiration. I've built a few Web sites using it in 
some clever ways that the owner of the company shared with me.)

> I've been
> in touch with PR people who represent other companies that make a 
> living
> from software for the education market - they are usually not 
> high-profile
> companies, and they usually serve only that market.
>
There are some. The key word in my response is "significant." I don't 
think there are any such companies who are also big enough to maintain 
both a development and a support effort for a full-blown development 
tool.

Schools typically want software free or at very low cost and they are 
(speaking from personal experience) very tough support customers 
because of turnover, lack of time and resources for most teachers and 
students to really dive in and learn a single program in the context of 
an academic calendar, and relatively infrequent use of any single piece 
of software. They are a difficult market to penetrate as well; the 
decision-maker is very often someone not on the org chart in a place 
where you could expect them to be. I'm sure things have gotten better 
since my last foray into that market, but making money there is a real 
challenge.

>
> Kirk
>
>         My latest book: How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
>                   http://www.mcelhearn.com/htde.html
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> . .
>  . .  Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France  
> . .
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>
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