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2 years agoA 172 is the plane you train to get a beginner license in. 90-120mph max.


A 172 is the plane you train to get a beginner license in. 90-120mph max.


As a mechanical engineer who spent multiple thousands of hours using SolidWorks, trying to use FreeCAD felt like flying a Cessna 172 after getting used to a Citation jet.
I’m invested because higher adoption of my preferred platform causes prices of said platform to drop, making the platform economically attractive to develop for.
Fewer users causes less effort to go into the platform by larger corporations due to lower revenue streams, diminishing updates and feature count over time.
Eventually, users leave due to pain points not being addressed. Shrinking user bases causes independent developer talent to focus on other platforms since the economics no longer work in the marginal case.
The shrinking independent developer contributions to the ecosystem make the required effort to develop for it that much higher, since the tools and apps that would have been built weren’t.
Higher development costs slow down feature pacing, due to the increased effort needed to substitute the efforts of missing ecosystem developers.
Lack of feature cadence drives users to other platforms, shrinking the user base, bringing us back to step 1.