Why do you guys pay for Poker Tracker?

[WARRiOR520]

Also, I forgot to mention...

PT Doesn't do razz, and that is a major major part of this.

[Phil153]

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Of course if he put in say 10 hours it would save EVERYONE $50, not just him... which is pretty cool (unless your poker tracker).

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To make a better PokerTracker would take a skilled coder 100-200x that long. And a team of coders far longer (in total hours).

Even using a highly productive language like c#, you'd need at least 25,000 lines of code, and a crapload of time in debugging and testing (more than most programs).

The PokerTracker add on I created for my personal/friends' use (which does everything you could possibly want, and then some) is 19,000 lines of original c# code - and I'm using third party dlls for graphing and postgres database access. I shudder to think what it would take to write a PokerTracker clone, with all its features, and deal with backwards compatibility issues for all the variants of hand histories while maintaining perfect accuracy. Which is the standard that most current users will demand.

Sure, it's trivial to write regex parsers for 10 sites, stick some results in a database and display them. But as the system grows larger and more complex, you need to a deal with a crapload of speed issues, design issues, conflicts, the hassles of multithreading, random bugs, GUI issues (more complex than you might think if you want to make quality product), and so on. Your code will grow hairs and easy things will become hard. And those annoyingly complex/tedius/difficult to code extra items that your product HAS to have (i.e. reading hand histories from email, autorating, bulletproof note export) will bog you down and turn your easy parsing & database job into a nightmare.

But I wish you luck.

[Mr. Orange]

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Also, I forgot to mention...

PT Doesn't do razz, and that is a major major part of this.

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PT stud supports Razz.

[PokerAce]

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I'm a student,

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This explains everything. Once you get some experience with real life software development, you'll see why people are willing to pay for software rather than writing it themselves.

[rvg72]

Phil153 pretty much nailed it - anyone with real world software experience knows how much work even the simplest of programs becomes once other people start using it.

TourneyManager is a much smaller project than Poker Tracker and it took a good 200 hours of work before it was released and another 200+ since then in updates, obscure bug fixes, dealing with site hand history changes and support and that's in a highly productive language like C# and 14 years of experience...

If your original post was something like: "I want to make an open source poker manager like Poker Tracker. Any developers out there want to take part?" then the responses would be a lot different.

Good luck with it though,

rvg

[Jallupullo]

I started almost similar disgussion on our national poker board this weekend and got just almost same answers like you have get here. I also wanted to start coding FREE poker software supporting few sites first, but got "crushed" comments like: yea yea, you are wannabee coder etc. even when I told that I was not gonna code it to my self, but our company employee (quite skilled vb programmer) with assistant other coders, if enough ppl and coders joins to project.

What is it ppl make say comments like that is what I dont understand. Look little bit around and stop stearing your own stomach, let others code for FREE and take you money from it, if you want or pay software like PT or PO. There is much great and big softwares for available for free, why not then also good or at least free poker tools? Enough coders who love the idea and BAM, there it is, killer software. Look at Linux, Firefox, GIMP, many virus softwares etc.

And its not money question for me, I have PO purchased. Im just kind person who thinks also others, but maybe the time was not right... Also im not 100% satisfied with PO, great software, but few important features is missing.

I hope that you wont stop coding just because you got negative feedback. Good luck to your project!

[WARRiOR520]

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I'm a student,

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This explains everything. Once you get some experience with real life software development, you'll see why people are willing to pay for software rather than writing it themselves.

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It seems you don't know enough about 'real life' software development, because if your views made any sense you would be able to back them up by the failure of the open source movement which is, to say the least... simply not failing.

Maybe I should write it just for myself and any collaborators since it seems to be in the spirit of poker that everyone should have to pay, forget the generosity and positives of open sourcing the code. Actually, I could do that, and I would be limited to what I could personally implement. Poker tracker is limited by a team of developers, that also will undoubtedly not be around forever to support paying customers and changes. If this type of thing was open and learned by even a few people, the software would be able to continue to thrive. I am done trying to explain this to you guys, maybe one of the supporters could point me in the direction of a software forum that has a poker discussion where people will just mind their own business if they find a project a waste of time? I'm pretty sure I could find a thousand projects online that I would consider less than worthwhile, should I have a problem with them being developed? Should I be writing in to the authors critically second guessing their desire to learn through coding? You must be real involved with software development, sounds like a very 'Microsoft' way of thinking, what do you have against open source? Many of the things you take for granted on today's internet would not be possible if not for the work of volunteer programmers.

[jukofyork]

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[ QUOTE ]
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I'm a student,

[/ QUOTE ]

This explains everything. Once you get some experience with real life software development, you'll see why people are willing to pay for software rather than writing it themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]

It seems you don't know enough about 'real life' software development, because if your views made any sense you would be able to back them up by the failure of the open source movement which is, to say the least... simply not failing.

Maybe I should write it just for myself and any collaborators since it seems to be in the spirit of poker that everyone should have to pay, forget the generosity and positives of open sourcing the code. Actually, I could do that, and I would be limited to what I could personally implement. Poker tracker is limited by a team of developers, that also will undoubtedly not be around forever to support paying customers and changes. If this type of thing was open and learned by even a few people, the software would be able to continue to thrive. I am done trying to explain this to you guys, maybe one of the supporters could point me in the direction of a software forum that has a poker discussion where people will just mind their own business if they find a project a waste of time? I'm pretty sure I could find a thousand projects online that I would consider less than worthwhile, should I have a problem with them being developed? Should I be writing in to the authors critically second guessing their desire to learn through coding? You must be real involved with software development, sounds like a very 'Microsoft' way of thinking, what do you have against open source? Many of the things you take for granted on today's internet would not be possible if not for the work of volunteer programmers.

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Whats with all the hostility here? The software forum is usually pretty chilled out so lets try and keep it that way! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I think half the problem is that as soon as anybody tries to point out the flaws in PT then everybody jumps in and starts trying to praise PT: Yes PT might have good support, but if the guy who wrote it has made > $500k from it then I'd expect nothing less tbo (the $500k figure comes from somebody's estimate taken from the number of registered 2+2ers and the number of registered users in the PT forums - it could be MUCH more...).

PT basically has no real competition, and I don't think anybody can deny that monopolies lead to stagnation: why bother improving anything if you can just sit back and print off the $'s with the same old thing year in year out?

I'm first to agree that something much better (and significantly faster) than PT could be created and open sourcing it seems an obvious way to encourage others to participate.

There are lots of people here who go out of their way to help others and to also provide free software/scripts for players to use and I'm sure if you create the framework you are talking about then others here will contribute what they can. Sadly, I'm not all that hopeful as there seems to be have been so many dead PT-clone projects already which haven't really made it past the planning stage.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[GeterPriffin]

I bought PokerTracker when it first came out a few years ago. At first, I thought that was expensive, but boy was i wrong. PT has done WONDERs for me. I would not play w/o it. I'd be willing to pay up to a few hundred just for it. The software ($50) was paid for within a few months; since I started at low stakes.

Also, the support and committment of PT Pat is top notch quality.

P.S. CB is the man as well.. Poker graphher is awesome [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[WARRiOR520]

Juk,
I am sorry, I am trying not to be hostile, I just thought I had politely asked people with nothing encouraging to say to just use their powers of choice and choose another thread to participate in. It just annoys me to hear someone say that in 'real life software development' so and so happen and no one redoes any work at all.. .well thats part true I happen to know most programmers, like me, would rather not reinvent the wheel, but if the wheel isn't open-source your not really reinventing it, your inventing an open version of it that can be used with other projects.

Honestly I have been more discouraged by the fact that I could spend all this time on something, and then have people get on my case because I might take a chunk out of PT's millions (that number made me sick as well, this is a simple statistic program... there are many huge contributors to the Linux OS that made all of that work a possibility, that are struggling to make ends meet, they also will humbly state that the maturing of linux was more important than a mansion for their small family.) I know that among poker players this is a hard concept to grasp, and I should not bother hoping that the open source sentiment will be shared here because for the most part the average jow here doesn't even care what open source has done for the internet, and software in general... he paid for his version of windows, plays online poker and wonders what the hell open source ever did for him. I on the other hand have been involved with the open source movement and Linux basically since I was old enough to understand how to format a 'useless' windows hard drive and install Linux so I cannot ignore it in this fashion. Again Juk I really do appreciate your input and I am sorry for the hostility, it was surely not aimed at you.

For any other poker enthusiasts who have any form of software development or even just some simple programming experience please take a minute to send me a quick PM. I am looking to create a type of sourceforge for poker related projects, complete with forums and other various extras to make useful collaboration on poker projects slightly less painful, and hopefully move us into a new level of understanding of both the game, and our craft.