An inconvenient truth

[Christopher Wright]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> How do I know this? I see it all the time. I won't use your product 
>> because of XYZ. So, I fix XYZ. Still no sale. Obviously, that was not 
>> the real reason.
> 
> I have an amusing anecdote on this. Many years ago back when DOS was 
> king and buffalo roamed the plains, I heard a rant from a C++ developer 
> that compile speed was the most important issue. He went on and on about 
> it. So what C++ compiler did he use? Glockenspiel's translator and MS's 
> C compiler. That combination was 4 times slower than other compilers.
> 
> Clearly, compile speed was not at all the issue that made him open his 
> checkbook, not even close.
> 
> -------
> 
> 10 years ago, a colleague made an impassioned pitch to me that what the 
> world needed was a native code Java compiler. I listened politely while 
> he told me what a killer compiler that would be, and that if I was smart 
> I'd listen to him and build it.
> 
> I told him I'd already built one a couple years previously (for 
> Symantec) and it did poorly. Nobody cared about it.
> 
> -------
> 
> Before I started on D, I was convinced by others that the world needed a 
> fast Javascript interpreter. I wrote one that was 20 times (yes, twenty 
> times) faster than Mozilla's. Nobody cared.
> 
> -------
> 
> The products I've done which were successful all, 100%, started out with 
> people laughing at me for doing them.

Perhaps you need to hire a marketing agency for your less audacious 
projects?