Head over to Jon's blog with the article "Morfik doing a Borland" (source).
I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas
I would like to ask some honest down to goodness questions.
1) Write about cost/benefit ratio with using Morfik vs. Delphi/IntraWeb. vs. traditional proven languages (C#, ASP.NET, ASP/MVC, PHP/MVC, Java, JSF).
2) Who will pay for development costs if a person recommends Morfik and project fails?
2b) Who will pay for development costs if customer walks away because of excessive-time spent to get the project running and there are hundreds of show-stopping bugs with Morfik?
3) How much does it cost to get timely support from Morfik, after getting banned from forum?
3b) How do you feel if you got banned from the Morfik forum? Compare and contrast getting banned in AToZed's newsgroups vs. getting banned from Embarcadero newsgroups, Java forums or ASP.NET forums.
4) How much will it cost to move a 120-webpage project from C# to Morfik?
4b) How much will it cost to re-code the whole project in a safe, proven language, such as C#/ASP.NET or PHP or Java, if project fails?
4c) Who will pay for this if customer refuses to pay?
4d) What will happen to the managers who recommended Morfik and project failed, if higher management want results and accountability?
4e) Should the developers and managers get significant pay-cuts while recoding the project from Morik to a safe proven language? Should they be laid-off if the project is still languishing and new developers be hired instead? ("There goes my Christmas superannuation").
5) What kind of career advancement does doing development with Morfik have to offer?
5b) If you were a new developer, would you trust to use Morfik when conventional, proven languages such as ASP.NET ASP.NET/MVC or PHP or Java (JSF) would do the job much better?
6) Compare and contrast development effort in a known, proven safe language vs. doing it Morfik. This question should be discussed in context of financials and commercial viability.
Bonus Question
7) Discuss how will you make sure customer pays for this web-product (SAAS or product), and discuss how to prevent thieves, cheats, liars from abusing the web-based product. Discuss how source-code theft will affect the business and how to prevent this from happening. If this is a free product, please do the maths on Google Ads return rates and Google AdSense revenue.
7) Discuss how will you make sure customer pays for this web-product (SAAS or product), and discuss how to prevent thieves, cheats, liars from abusing the web-based product. Discuss how source-code theft will affect the business and how to prevent this from happening. If this is a free product, please do the maths on Google Ads return rates and Google AdSense revenue.
7b) Discuss which model would you use - Open-Source or Closed-Source model and which model is better in terms of profitability. Discuss whether making an App on iOS with server solution is better?
Every blog, webpage written about Morfik is all developer-speak and about the goodness of this product. Making sure all numbers balance (i.e., development costs vs. estimated profits) without any financial wizardry or requirement of extra loans or emergency funding. Try to use language would impress a group of Angel Investors who wishes to invest in large development team who will use Morfik, with aim of profits after 3 years, good working conditions (very fast computers, good wages, mobile development and high growth)
Extra points will be given towards commercial viability, critical thinking, reasoning and ability to make clear decisions. Note that the decisions you make affect your own career path. It could be development heaven or -- decent into development nightmare leading to development hell.
Also assume, that upon total company failure -- such as failure to make a sensible business plan, failure to achieve any profits - top management may be threatened with legal action with loan recall where they may will lose their house, their car, job and made bankrupt. Assume that if the development heads south, that the Angel investors may demote current managers and will bring in talent from other successful companies (using C#, Java or PHP) to turn the whole company around.
Please note, assume that the current group of Angel Investors have already invested in companies developing with C#, Java, PHP and two companies who used to develop with Delphi/IntraWeb.
Good luck.
Posts
8 comments:
Let me generalize the article for you?
"Why the hell someone will use the thing called Morfik, while there are bunch of mature, proven, widely used, free, active, supported, with huge user base, open sourced frameworks on both Windows/IIS and Linux/Apache stacks?"
Hi Tech Guy :)
Some people are blinded by their faith in the language called Delphi and Pascal, that they forget everything. They act in a delusional way and don't think straight.
I would like to see sane, reasonable answers for those questions being answered.
Just wait and watch what happens... In the mean time, enjoy the show.
I break a lance here for Jon. He described very detailed the circumstances required to run a Morfik application and have an easy way to deploy under the assumption it would work one day.
Little update:
Things have improved at least little concerning support of people on existing projects and the development process is now no longer this open. In the meanwhile they believe them, that there are show stoppers and fix. At least this.
Beside just normal PHP .. Flashbuilder for PHP.
(little older)
http://corlan.org/2008/11/13/flex-and-php-remoting-with-zend-amf/
http://corlan.org/2009/06/12/working-in-flash-builder-4-with-flex-and-php/
http://www.adobe.com/at/products/flash-builder_php.html
7) An interesting question. Can a company make business on something that is free available. No. If someone rethinks consequently the business of a service company supporting an open source development could be called warranty and is warranty in my opinion.
On Morfik. I personally think the whole giving away for free and attract a certain group of people is about playing a minor role in the cloud business in a no future. I don't think it was the aim in the beginning. Finally every cloud technology needs people - the cloud promise is -> there will always be someone.
From Altiums perspective this can make sense. They are not dependent on another vendor. For a critical feature as the ECO System 'Add-On' to their designer with heavy focus on integrating the customers via 'hosted' solutions an alternative. So from the perspective it will become a mature product, yes. In this context it makes sense, especially for Altium and Morfik.
Morfik from the conception is not false, from the concept a good alternative, but what happens if your app stops to work aber 4 hours, because there is a bug in the code generation only the vendor can identify. This is not what I would expect. The moment you can do this on your own you can write almost everything with every web technology.
I still see the boom for the Clouds in general more in the fashion - someone built IaaS data centers and now need a few years some idiots who believe in a picture drawn by demand creators and somehow finance the write off, because prospective customers already have a data center and will not pay twice. This is why cloud data centers attract everyone without a data center. This helps to spread the mobile devices ... lot's of phantasy, but for a honest enterprneuer who wants to run his/her own business... finally if it's a good idea then do it on your own and in another case it is not worse the effort.
Hi Michael Bunny :)
If you do answer the question in a sane, consistent and logical manner, see below:
"Try to ... impress a group of Angel Investors who wishes to invest in large development team who will use Morfik, with aim of profits after 3 years, good working conditions (very fast computers, good wages, mobile development and high growth)"
The money is in the box... Just need someone with a viable business plan and viable business solution.
I don't want the Morfik business to be like IntraWeb, design almost a full website and have to re-write it into C#... It costs money to rewrite, not to mention wasted copies of Delphi and IntraWeb.
Oh... CR is missing...
I just wanted to say 7) Is an interesting question.
No, you are not plain enough.
If you really want to setup a scalable internet business you will have to control and be in the position to fix the infrastructure too. So VIM and recompile your infrastructure every morning. This is Cloud internet business.
I think I pointed it out. For Altium it makes sense. They run their own infrastructure and control the development of their tool. Morfik is the Altium Designer concept for the Web.
But my friend. What do think why they five it away for free and have a closed Beta. Someone will have to pay for Altiums data-center and will be be bound to the Altium cloud via PaaS. I don't know, I cannot proove but I would do it this way.
In internet cloud business a developer that is not already an experienced web developer ... forget it.
The whole Hybrid Cloud and off premise integration is work enough. Facebook is here and 37 signals too, we will not implement:)
>>Hi Michael Bunny :)
You will get used to it. I know it is hard to accept to talk to a rabbit especially a virtual one. Some business ladies on Linkedin had problems with this so I created a human avatar, this was hard work.
"1) Write about cost/benefit ratio with using Morfik vs. Delphi/IntraWeb. vs. traditional proven languages (C#, ASP.NET, ASP/MVC, PHP/MVC, Java, JSF)."
If everyone thought like this there would be no PHP, nor Ruby etc.
Why doing something new and UNPROVEN if there is always existing TRADITIONAL and SAFE platforms and languages?
Post a Comment