How to explain that writing universally cross-platform C++ code and shipping products for all OSes is not that easy?
- by sharptooth
Our company ships a range of desktop products for Windows and lots of Linux users complain on forums that we should have been written versions of our products for Linux years ago and the reason why we don't do that is
we're a greedy corporation
all our technical specialists are underqualified idiots
Our average product is something like 3 million lines of C++ code.
My and my colleagues analysis is the following:
writing cross-platform C++ code is not that easy
preparing a lot of distribution packages and maintaining them for all widespread versions of Linux takes time
our estimate is that Linux market is something like 5-15% of all users and those users will likely not want to pay for our effort
when this is brought up the response is again that we're greedy underqualified idiots and that when everything is done right all this is easy and painless.
How reasonable are our evaluations of the fact that writing cross-platform code and maintaining numerous ditribution packages takes lots of effort? Where can we find some easy yet detailed analysis with real life stories that show beyond the shadow of a doubt what amount of effort exactly it takes?
