side effect as goal

you know, its funny. i find myself thinking and saying this a lot. i wonder when in the course of history did writing software become a way to make money. people started out writing good software for other reasons, whether to scratch an itch or to impress the ladies, they didnt start writing it to make money. now they discovered that along the way, they ended up making some serious fuck-you money, which is great of course. now all these gold digging son-of-bitch posers jump on the bandwagon to try to create the same side effect, but fail miserably and they wonder why. i dont blame them one bit. you see people getting rich doing something that you think you can do, you're going to fuck over anyone to get there first.

what they fail to realize is that to make money on software, it has to be good software, and you dont go about creating good software because you want to make money. i swear to christ that these people have on their requirements doc "make money" as the number one item. in order to make money, you have to not want to make any in the first place. that's funny. unfortunately, these people do stay alive and do well in the economy that has been created from good software. they tag along inside big companies or just get money from other people who think they will eventually get some fuck-you money from their efforts. few of these things rarely work out.

and yes. there are piles of books on the subject of how to write good software and all that junk. its not going to matter to most of the people i speak of. they're so lost in the forest that they just keep hacking away (pun definitely intended) and miss the big picture. no amount of schooling is going to set these people straight.

so i guess my advice to people who want to make money. DONT TRY. just try to do something good. the money will come as a side effect, or it wont. either way, it is your best shot.