[Ocaml-biz] creating a household name

[Gerd Stolpmann]

On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 17:20, Brian Hurt wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> 
> > Well, that wouldn't be objectively correct.  It was a $31 billion
> > industry last I checked a few years ago.  
> 
> Ohhh!  I'm scared.
> 
> EDS, a single company in the CAD/CAM market

???

Sorry, but I think you are on the wrong track. EDS' business is to
operate data centers of any kind, mainly for the car industry, and here
mainly for General Motors. It was outsourced from GM a long time ago.

Yes, there are also CAD/CAM solutions, but as I pointed out, they
operate them, but they don't create them. As far as I know, EDS does not
create software.

>  that you've probably never 
> heard of, 

EDS is well-known.

Gerd

> had $5.76 *billion* dollars of income in a single quarter- or 
> about $20 *billion* dollars a year in revenue.  And they aren't doing so 
> hot:
> 
> http://www.eds.com/news/news_4q2003earnings.pdf
> 
> This single company is 2/3rds the size of the entire gaming industry.
> 
> And they aren't alone.
> 
> Here's the thing.  A bare bones, stripped, version of these programs 
> weighs in at $10K.  Full-on professional versions weight in at $100K or 
> more.  And since they allow one engineer to do the work of five, companies 
> gladly pay these prices.
> 
> By unit sales, games have it all over CAD/CAM packages.  Of course you 
> sell a heck of a lot more $50 games than $50K CAD/CAM packages.  But in 
> terms of dollars spent, and people dedicated to supporting the market, the 
> CAD/CAM market is way huger than Games can ever dream of being.
> 
> > Games also drive PC
> > performance forwards, i.e. CPU speeds, system buses, 3D cards.  You
> > think Microsoft created a console because they're all a bunch of
> > repressed creative types?  No, they're chasing the money.  They know
> > that "the battle for the eyeballs" is strategically important.
> 
> And both of these help Ocaml in what way?
> 
> I question wether games really are driving performance, and not Microsoft 
> bloat.
> 
> As for Microsoft getting into consoles, they need to expand into all the 
> new markets they can.  They're also getting into iPod knockoffs.  They're 
> trying to grow a $24B/yr company at 15% per annum- they need to conquer 
> all the new markets they can.  They have some knowledge of how to write an 
> OS and put OTS hardware together, so they did consoles.
> 
> 
> > Open Office or Pro-E, sure, but show me the money for the R&D.  
> 
> Sure.  Right after you show me the money for games.
> 
> > Incidentally, I don't know that Pro-E would be the victory you imagine.
> > Wasn't Lisp its claim to fame?  I think CAD is merely 'that space', and
> > not broadly on everyone's lips.
> 
> Pro/E contained a lisp variant for scripting.  I don't think it was 
> written in Lisp (never knew anyone who worked there, so I can't say for 
> sure).
> 
> > > Getting
> > > Doom-IV written in Ocaml will be a victory for months if we're lucky.
> > 
> > That's nonsense.  Any technically superior 3D engine has always made
> > waves.  First we only had ID Software.  Then Unreal came along.  Then
> > Half-Life came along.  Well, it's still coming along, but that's another
> > story.
> 
> And how long has each of those engines been "the big name engine"?  Doom 
> was released in 1993.  In the last 10 years we've had 4 different engines- 
> meaning each engine had a life expectancy of 2.5 years.  Maybe 3.3.
> 
> > 
> > > Another problem is that the fraction of the industry actually
> > > working on games is miniscule.
> > 
> > You can only say 'miniscule' in relative terms.  
> 
> I beleive that is what I said.
> 
> > In absolute terms, the
> > game industry has huge numbers of programmers and artists and is highly
> > organized.  If you want to understand the game industry better, you can
> > look at http://www.gamasutra.com and http://www.igda.com  Film
> > franchises and huge budgets are the order of the day.  In 10 years' time
> > the artistic skills needed to work in the film or game industries will
> > be indistinguishable.
> 
> The programming skills will be unrecognizable.
> 
> > 
> > > I know hundreds of programmers in just about every
> > > corner of the industry
> > > (including dozens who would love a
> > > killer linalg package like I've described).
> > 
> > Then mobilize them into your personal team and go do it.  
> 
> I am.
> 
> > Nobody on
> > ocaml-biz has stepped up to help you, however.  
> 
> Incorrect at least one other person has stepped up to help- but the
> discussions have been happening off-line.
> 
> > > I know one guy (not counting you, Brandon)
> > > who would like to get into games (he hasn't yet).  This isn't a
> > > statistical sample, I'll agree-
> > 
> > Nor relevant even if it was.  The vast majority of people I talk to on
> > mailing lists and newsgroups are game developers, whether hobbyists or
> > professionals.  Seattle is one of the world epicenters of game
> > development.
> 
> And Minneapolis isn't, which is why I said my sample wasn't statistically 
> valid.  Yours isn't either.
> 
> > > but compared to the number of people
> > > writing "boring" business apps, or even the number of people writting
> > > embedded realtime code, there is almost no one writting games.  Heck,
> > > compared to the number of people in the CAD/CAM industry,
> > > there is almost no one writting games.
> > 
> > But ask a bunch of kids what they do with computers, and they will tell
> > you games.  Games have disproportionate mindshare for the number of
> > people working on them.  No kid writes boring business apps.  13 year
> > olds write games.
> 
> Great.  Ocaml: GWBasic for the 21st century.
> 
> 
> > 
> > > There is one advantage game programming has.  Gaming is popular among
> > > students.  And so a lot of students start out thinking they
> > > want to write
> > > games.  They later discover that writting games is a lot like being a
> > > musician- it's glamorous and rewarding for the select few who
> > > make it, most people don't, however.
> > >
> > > The problem with selling to this market, however, is that almost by
> > > definition they don't know anything. They will actually be *less*
> > > inclined to take a chance on a radical new language, because
> > > they don't know how/why one language can be better than another.
> > 
> > You've got it totally backwards.  They don't know anything, so it's easy
> > to sell them any old thing.  How on Earth do you think Microsoft has got
> > them doing C# and Managed DirectX?  Kids have *tons* of energy for shit.
> > They want to work on something *KEWL*.  Well, OCaml *is* kewl.  And if
> > you can't figure out how you'd sell a kid on OCaml, well, you don't have
> > any head for marketing.
> 
> They know they want to be professional programmers.  And they can read 
> want ads.  As such they have a pretty good idea what professional 
> programmers are using.  The last thing we want is for Ocaml to get the 
> reputation as a kids programming language- fine for writting the sorts of 
> games and programs 13 year olds write, but not something you do *real* 
> programming in.  Once you grow up, you learn a different language.
> 
> Generally, thirteen year olds don't take the programming language they 
> know with them into industry- as the experiences of Basic, Pascal, and 
> Logo all attest.
> 
> > Well, nothing better than Intel has come along yet either.  Meaning, AMD
> > 64-bit exists, and people aren't simply flocking to it.  Don't
> > underestimate legacy support issues.  You're talking a very slow road to
> > growth, trying to replace BLAS/LAPACK by open source means. 
> 
> Yep.  It'll be slow to get there, but once we get there, we stay there for 
> quite some time.  You're taking the fast route- fast up, and fast down.
> 
> > It will
> > take you many years if you have the strategic discipline [*] to keep
> > such a project going all those years.  If you attach yourself to
> > funding, get your buddies into a startup, and offer a commercial
> > product, you could do it tons faster.
> 
> Yep.  VC funding is a trick at this point.
> 
> > A more famous example of 'loss of strategic discipline' is when the
> > Netscape guys rewrote their browser from scratch.  That's one of the
> > main things that allowed Microsoft to put them under the table.
> 
> Shipping IE for free with every new computer had no impact, I presume.
> 
> > > By the way, I can not *imagine* any of the people working in
> > > the business
> > > logic end of the industry to say something like "Hey- let's
> > > use language
> > > X.  It was used to develop this game I really like, I think
> > > it'd be great for our core database app!"
> > 
> > Even if they were a MMORPG freak in their spare time, and noticed the
> > complete lack of downtime for some OCaml super-server?  Mind you, that's
> > not a space I'm after right now, but it is a possibility.
> 
> Would that be chalked up to A) the language used, B) the skills of the 
> people writting the game, or C) to the perception that writting a MMORPG 
> server is considered easier by these people than writting a massive 
> business logic server?
-- 
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Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany 
gerd at gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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