Re: $500 <= chump change, was Re: Port I/O

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Tom Moran says

"There do exist companies where $500 is beyond the petty cash aloowance
of a low level manager.  More to the point, here in Silicon Valley, a
lot of games, and other things, were initiated by programmers in their
'off hours' and using their own money.  To my high school son, for
instance, $500 is not 'a pretty trivial amount'.  If you expect the next
original game, Ada killer app, or whatever, to come from MS, Lockheed,
IBM, or such, then $500 or $1K/year is a low hurdle.  History, however,
suggests innovations often come from kids with a bright idea, and I
suspect such prices will steer their creativity elsewhere."

I think you are creating a fantasy world here, and not the kind of
fantasy world that we are interested in!

These days, sucessful video games cost well into 7 figures to develop
(they can gross hundreds of millions if they are successful, so that's
not out of line by any means), but the days when high school students
could do interesting things in the game market is long gone!