eosha

The extra cost to produce high-quality software is not offset by higher profits from that software. If low-quality software generates 90% of the revenue for 30% of the cost, why bother with that extra work? It makes sense from the management's perspective, however frustrating it is from the user's end.

I face the same thing. I'm locked into using a particular GIS software package for my work, supposedly a central system accessible from any device. However, in practice they have 3 different apps and 2 different web interfaces, none of which have the same feature set. And often I want to use data that's accessible on one of their platforms to do processing that's only available on another of their platforms. And there are backend problems for which I've periodically been sending in support/suggestion tickets for a decade without any fixes. However, their marketing feeds are constantly bragging about new features and integrations. Why? Fixing their broken shit is harder work for less payoff. So they just don't. And they've got the patents, so they don't have to care.

I'm a full time Iowa farmer. And not an "alternative" farmer, a John Deere & rows of corn type.

Unless you have:

A) an existing land base big enough to support you (in my area, that might be 500+ acres) and the knowledge and equipment to farm it,

B) a niche market for a rare farm product that you can charge exorbitant prices for, or

C) preexisting wealth (which can maybe get you item A),

you're not going to get ahead financially by homesteading. The business model just doesn't pencil out. Doubly so for any sort of animal agriculture. The market (both inputs and outputs) is driven by commercial farms, and you're trying to compete with that market from a wildly disadvantaged starting position.

Homesteaders I know also tend to be rather unfocused in their plans. They want to grow 15 different kinds of food, build everything they need from scratch, learn how to do a dozen different jobs, and take care of all the various maintenance around it all. That's fun when it's a hobby, but exhausting when you're trying to make a living off of it. And ultimately the work you're doing for yourself and the money your saving are usually the equivalent of minimum-wage-type jobs; having a basement full of home-canned garden produce is a point of pride, but it's not like the price of grocery store frozen peas was making up a significant fraction of your monthly spending beforehand.