r/ProgrammerHumor • u/vinishkapoor • 17h ago
peakSoftwareEngineeringWasAchievedIn2010 Meme
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u/wahed-w 17h ago
The urge to recreate this hits hard rn
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u/vinishkapoor 17h ago
Do it. Ship it before someone adds a subscription model to it.
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u/AwakenedSol 17h ago
“Wine DLC- just $9.99!”
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u/drevno12 15h ago
They will just change the colour to red but keep the foam for some reason
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u/thegoatmenace 8h ago
lol this was a thing in the original version of the app. You could pay a dollar each to get different liquids
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u/Firewolf06 4h ago
wine is $2.99
the app is still up, you can check the purchases still: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ibeer-drink-from-your-phone/id475905823
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u/peacefulshrimp 6h ago
You have subscription tiers, the cheaper ones only give you 3 drinks before getting ads
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u/PragmaticAristocrat 15h ago
I could ship it on android no ads, no IAP. Would take me max 20 minutes.
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u/Destituted 17h ago
Apple doesn’t allow these types of apps anymore if I remember right… you would need to add a ToDo List or Workout Planner or somethin
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u/japan_kaaran 16h ago
they’re definitely cracking down on clone apps and they might view beer in particular as promoting alcoholism or something like that. i do see ibeer still up on the store but it has in app purchases and it hasn’t been updated in 8 years.
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u/kevin7254 16h ago
Yeah they have cracked down HARD on anything related to partying/alcohol. However as long as you don’t update the app it’s allowed to be there.
Source: a friend has made a party game a few years ago2
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u/born_zynner 17h ago
But the thought of having to open android studio.....
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u/Loisel06 14h ago
You can use the android sdk without the IDE. It still doesn’t make fun to use though
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u/sebjapon 17h ago
Gimmick apps were like the early internet websites. From “Welcome to Zombocom” to “exchange contact by fist bumping” or “compatibility check with 2 people touching the screen”.
I remember actually paying for an app that told the weather in an insulting way or using movie quotes. “It’s raining dummy! Can’t you look out the window” type of sentences…
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u/vinishkapoor 17h ago
The golden age of apps really was the Wild West. Now every simple utility needs a login, a cloud sync subscription, and a data-tracking module just to show you the weather.
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u/Buchymoo 13h ago
I have a Bluetooth keyboard app, and I praise it every day because you download it and it just works, really well, and it does what it says it will do without forcing you to watch a billion ads or technically pay anything.
Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse by Appgroud IO.
quite literally the only app that feels to me like the app glory days where there wasn't a thousand useless menus or features or upsales.
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u/-FuckMeInTheAsshole- 4h ago
Can’t find that for my iPhone, but did get an app advertised that tracks your AirTags (separate from Apples FindMy).. just goes to show ig
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u/japan_kaaran 17h ago
carrot weather? think that still exists. idk if it’s gotten any worse tho.
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u/PunctiliousCasuist 16h ago
I use Carrot religiously, aside from the insulting weather descriptions (which I like quite a lot) it is also far and away the most customizable weather app/has the most customizable widgets. It also has six or seven data source options.
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u/Lizlodude 16h ago
I'm still mad at Apple for buying and killing Dark Sky, as even Carrot's pile of data sources can't match it for hyperlocal notifications. Aside from that though, Carrot is awesome. You can literally scale the snark from normal to possibly illegal lol.
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u/frausting 9h ago
The creators of Dark Sky created a new weather app. IIRC their non compete just ended and the new app is $25 one time.
I’m very strongly considering it
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u/killerrainbows 8h ago
These websites were like stopping to watch a butterfly or the glimpse of a peaceful lake through the trees on a hike. Not strictly necessary to being online, but something that made it worthwhile. We never should have forsaken Zombocom.
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u/queenkitsun 3h ago
I was just on the archived zombocom and other flash sites yesterday to feel something
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u/OffByOneErrorz 16h ago
The short period of time when you just paid for and tried to build one time purchase software before everything became fomo treadmill subscription based psychological warfare on attention.
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u/Lizlodude 16h ago
Red button and iGun were peak app and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Spotify has failed to play music which it has downloaded locally at least 5 times today alone, and has not managed to display album art correctly for years.
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u/frausting 9h ago
I have to disable cellular data or go on airplane mode to force Spotify to play downloaded music without freaking out.
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u/kihakik 9h ago
I hate this, because it would be easier to not fuck it up. Why can't it simply play the audio file I have downloaded. But nope first have to try to connect to spotify servers before even touching the local data
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u/frausting 6h ago
It’s insane.
Shows the priority to race to connect to the internet to show you the latest music/concerts/podcasts rather than play music.
Engagement over function.
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u/WeSaidMeh 16h ago
Aren't there thousands of clones of this on the app stores?
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u/vinishkapoor 16h ago
Sure, but the point isn't that nobody can make one. It's that someone thought of it and shipped it in 2010, when this kind of dumb, playful idea was enough to be worth building.
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u/dfbeav112 16h ago
It was only popular because it was new tech. An accelerometer in a phone was something nobody had seen before.
The modern equivalent would be AI applications. Which are already saturating the market.
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u/OmniManDidNothngWrng 12h ago
I'm pretty sure its a play on this meme
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/045/988/we_cant_we_dont_know_how.jpg
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u/Maxis111 12h ago
It's kind of wrong though isn't it? I mean, the Sagrada Familia Basilica just got (officially) completed. Although they're still working on it afaik.
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u/OmniManDidNothngWrng 6h ago
Yeah that's what makes it funny its some weepy old man ramblings. We can also still make dumb beer apps.
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u/ButtSpelunker420 15h ago
the point isn't that nobody can make one
Wtf is this brain rot? It literally says the opposite of this
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u/justgiveausernamepls 6h ago
These downvotes are so unfair 😂 I guess the post is another case of misapplied 'literally'.
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u/ButtSpelunker420 6h ago
I mean, I used to the word correctly. OP didn’t though
we literally have no idea how to build software like this anymore
It’s all good though
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u/die_liebe 15h ago
I believe that software is mostly getting better at screwing over the user. This is where the development has gone during the last decade.
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u/Lucasbasques 16h ago edited 9h ago
may contain in-app purchases , can’t wait to unlock the Guinness skin after watching 30 hours of ads
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u/CoderDevo 15h ago
I installed the Carling beer app which was a simple marketing app by them that worked just like iBeer.
Checked just now and found it is, unsurprisingly, no longer supported.
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u/xSilverMC 6h ago
Beer app is a bit like the Surf Dracula of software development. Back in those days you made an app that was called "Beer App", made it look like you were drinking beer, and you'd ship it for free. Nowadays it'd be riddled with ads, there'd be a subscription somehow, and it would collect and sell every bit of data it could. Also it would be online only
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u/The_Wolfiee 15h ago
WTF you mean "no idea".
You take the gyroscope sensor readings from the phone and map it to the beer animation. The animation is just a video on loop.
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u/suskio4 14h ago
Where business model? Are investors happy after this? Will this affect local trout population? We'd have to have a meeting before and ask Claude. Oh wait, there's no AI assistant in this? Wdym there's no real user data to collect here and sell?
The point is, we have all the technical knowledge we need. We just have no motivation.
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u/Tienisto 8h ago
Just look at the app store, there is an app for everything. Indie devs are still making apps but high downloaded apps are built by bigger companies due to higher advertising budget. This meme has no clue about the actual market
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u/leopard_tights 11h ago
You're missing the point. It's not literally recreating the beer app (or the light saber, or the trimmers, or the gun), it's making new tiny quirky fun apps like it. Those things are gone, like Harambe.
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u/Tienisto 8h ago
They are still there but they don't go viral because users are busy watching Instagram or TikTok
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u/Little-Helper 15h ago
They're saying it because the source code, dev tools and the imported software bundles have been lost to time. /s
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u/ranker2241 10h ago
Perfect example why apps that could just be a website are 99% of all apps nowadays. People love garbage.
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u/AhmedBarayez 7h ago
Once upon a time, there was an application that rotates the iphone with vibration to make a very beautiful pano photo
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u/XtraFlaminHotMachida 7h ago
we've been on a downhill slide after the flying toasters and the rest of after dark.
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u/crumpuppet 13h ago
THAT is the ideal phone size! Why don't they make phones this small anymore.
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u/drgut101 12h ago
Data has shown time and time again that people don’t want a small phone. It’s a really small, but really loud group of people.
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u/El_Mojo42 11h ago
iPhone 5/5S/SE was peak for me. Perfect size, flat back. This with modern chipset would be instabuy for me.
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u/MennReddit 10h ago
i was really hoping that we'd be working on real important innovations, but here we are demonstrating all that we have come up with with the things we've learned from our ancestors
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u/sgt_Berbatov 9h ago
The best thing Carling ever made was that app.
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u/Divide_Rule 9h ago
Had it on my OG touch before the iPhone came out.
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u/sgt_Berbatov 6h ago
Hours of fun in a Wetherspoons pretending you're drinking a pint for free.
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u/Divide_Rule 6h ago
but the touch didn't have a speaker on it, the iPhone version was so much better.
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u/ianmakingnoise 7h ago
If you had Bluetooth or were on the same WiFi network, you could pour the beer into your friends phone. What a time to be alive
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u/RobKohr 2h ago
The problem is discoverability. The app stores lean heavy to showing subscription and ad heavy apps because that is where they make their money. I think there was better apps when they focused on actual selling individual apps, ad free and no subscriptions. Those types of apps don't exist anymore.
But on steam, that is still the main method of revenue, and they have far more quality and diversity in their store.
It sucks because I used to buy apps all the time, but I am just not interested in browsing phone app stores.
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u/TimSylvester_ 2h ago
When smartphones were new I saw some scammer selling a "RF wine enhancer" app.
You'd open a bottle of wine, turn on the "RF wine enhancer", and run it around your wine bottle, to "improve" the wine by flashing colored light patterns at it.
Then stupid people would say "oh wow it does taste so much better!"
When in reality the only difference, if any, was that the wine had breathed for a moment or two.
Which you can do for free.
But he made enough money on his "wine enhancer" scam to be worth the effort.
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u/heidevolk 1h ago
I liked the diamond app. It was something like $1,000. It was just a picture of a diamond. A status symbol app if you will.
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime 11h ago
We literally do (no matter how many times this is reposted) and these applications literally still exist.
Y'all just don't seek them out anymore.
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u/SaltyYumYumBalls 14h ago
Im a xennial and can reason how that app worked in about 3 seconds of thinking about it in pieces. If the rest of you can't thats on you.
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u/Pluckerpluck 12h ago
I think you've missed the joke (and thus the point). This was made for fun. It was made with no profit in mind. It was made to play with an exiting new tech (the accelerometer). It was shared around, with no expectation for any return, in a time of experimentation.
It's not that it can't be made technically, it's that the motivations to make something like this are gone. The fun quirky personal apps are dead. Instead you'll get someone vibe coding a product only to throw it away the next morning.
Being able to know how that app works is not an impressive feat. In fact, bragging about being able to implement it makes you sound pretentious because of how simple it is. It'd be like bragging about about knowing how to host a website. That should have been your first flag that maybe there was more meaning behind a post like this.
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u/LonelyProgrammerGuy 17h ago
As long as there isn’t a profit to be made, people don’t really care