Pure dynamic casts?

[Jarrett Billingsley]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Jeremie Pelletier <jeremiep at gmail.com> wrote:
> language_fan wrote:
>> A used 2.5 GHz Athlon XP with 1GB of RAM and 100GB of disk costs about
>> $100. Anything below that is obsolete these days. Good luck selling anything
>> to people who use older computers, they are probably broke anyways.
>> Otherwise I just see it cheaper to build your apps slower and require
>> hardware updates. Just imagine - a highly optimized $400 program is way too
>> expensive for most users, a $50 program + $200 hw upgrade sounds just fine.
>
> But a $40 optimized program will flush the competition of either $400
> optimized equivalents or $40 slow equivalents, making you the winner in the
> end. People are so crazy about money they care more about their profits than
> the satisfaction of their customers.
>

This.

I don't have a problem with making money off software, but don't know
why so many companies make it so expensive. Take Alias Sketchbook Pro.
It's a fine program. It's got an intuitive interface, makes clean
lines, is fast and resource-conscious. At one time it was priced at
$200 [1]. For what? It has something like 3 drawing tools and a simple
layering scheme. No custom brushes, no effects, no special integration
with other programs, nothing. Compare that to Paint Tool Sai, which
does everything it does, as well as having vectorized inks, custom
brushes, patterns, complex layering and layer blending, accurate
digital painting etc. for all of $53. Guess which one I bought.

[1]It's now only $100, but Sai still beats it for half the price.