Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

It puzzles economists and certainly me that people often behave as if the value of their time is zero. This turns up in mysteries such as why people commute so far, why grandmothers make scarfs out of acrylic instead of wool yarn, etc.

A "couple days of work" could be 3 to 5, U.S. minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and if you work 8 hours a day that is $174 to $290.

A real wage for a developer in the U.S. is probably 10x that. A company I worked for charged $2000-$3000 for a simple interactive web site, probably more like $20,000 for a serious application with a fair number of screens.

I rarely do "free trials" of products, particularly when I am working for somebody else. Giving a product a fair evaluation could be week or more of work, which won't pay off unless I buy the product. If I am working for someone else I have to not only convince myself but may also need to convince my boss, convince my boss's boss, ...

Similiarly I see all kinds of hand-wringing from people who are afraid that they are going to exceed the free tier on AWS and get a bill for $2.

I am a big fan of low code, I think the world still needs a web-based version of the old Microsoft Access. Why that doesn't exist is beyond me, but I will say (1) Firebase isn't it, and (2) whenever somebody does make one they seem to quickly get bought and shut down.

> behave as if the value of their time is zero

I see this in my home kitchen and it has come to drive me batty. I think it's related to general innumeracy. Maybe the fear of numbering thing.

In the kitchen I've seen people saving butter wrappers to use the little scraps of butter on them to grease up pots and pans for cooking. That couldn't be a tenth of a cents worth of butter. Same with sauces and leaving only the last little table spoon in them. Why not use it all up and get a new one? I think it's also an inherited behavior back from Depression era days. Shrug.

Probably because it's more complex then that. Time is worth zero unless someone is willing to pay you for it. So by saving something when someone is unwilling to pay you more then it is worth for the cost then you have "made" that money.

The only depression-era thing that I can think of passed on through my family and those I know is inherently selfish mechanism of survival because of scarcity. Things like always pay yourself first, and take what you can get when you can get it.

It's also about reflecting your own values, such as remembering when you lived in less abundant times, not consuming more environmental or financial resources than you really need to, and demonstrating those values to other family members in the hope they are remembered.

Personally I stopped working 10 years ago and have plenty of financial resources, but I still take the train or bus as much as possible, or if I must drive, walk a block to avoid paying for parking. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with living the values that I care about and trying to communicate those to our kids.

web-based version of the old Microsoft Access

Isn't Airtable similar to what you're describing (though it isn't as powerful)?

Or do you have something else in mind?

Airtable is a barely-glorified spreadsheet with the barest hint of relational capabilities.

Access was a full relational database and drag-and-drop UI builder (with generated forms and views as well) that could drop down to SQL in a pinch.

I too would absolutely love a web-based Access equivalent.

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