It said “cheaper” not “energy efficient”.
Wings are easy, jet engines are hard.
Besides, if you can do it with an electrical locomotive on the ground, the energy conversion to electricity of a power plant should be better than the energy conversion of a jet engine from fuel to movement.
So imo, cheaper seems plausible, energy efficient is a maybe.
If this is not a meme…
You know how you have to look up… errors when you don’t know what they mean?
That.
Figuring out how to do something specific, like UI, works just like that. All the time. It’s “looking up how it works”, then “messing around with it until it does” all the way down.
If you are just starting out, coding something in HTML and javascript might be intuitive, because you can see and run it right away. Otherwise you will have to figure out how to use some kind of UI framework in the language you’re using. Because they’re all different. Yeeeaaah…
I think it’s harder for compiled languages and easier for interpreted ones.
The game Mindustry is one example.
Yes. And as you can see it has 14k reviews on steam while factorio has 141k reviews.
It’s also a game, so there is no productivity gain or loss associated with it. There is no on call IT support, but you also don’t need any and if something breaks, you lose nothing except the ability to play THIS game for a short while. It’s not a… webserver you run your online shop through where every hour of downtime costs you X hundreds of euros or dollars.
The game was also made by what looks like one guy. It’s not, you know libre office. With hundreds and thousands of contributors and a huge problem of how to distribute the money.
Of course you’re allowed to distribute it. And of course you’re allowed to charge for it. But realistically, nearly nobody would use it.
The cost of switching to an unfamiliar Interface and workflow is high enough, charging money to do it will further increase the barrier to entry.
Paying for open source software sounds good on paper, but if it is required, the software will never accumulate the users to make the development have any meaning.
There has to be a “try it before you buy it” too. Otherwise the permutations of scams are obvious and nobody will fall for that. Idk how you would prove that the software works, without giving an actual copy of the software.
Also, legalities between different countries. You will just not get your money back from “trustworthy nigerian software dev who just needs 50$ to give you some software”.
So no.
Do donate if you can though. If you value the software you use, you will pretty obviously recognize the utility and the cost to you, should it go away.
The guy I want to hear from, this dude:
https://www.youtube.com/@MrBtongue
posted every 3 months or less and he hasn’t uploaded for a 6 years.
I hope he’s alive and well tbh.
I mean, I won’t deny that small bit of skill it took to construct a plausible sounding explanation for why the public should support your investment, because it’s “not illegal (yet)”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CfLt2jwZZs