OK, I guess I didn't explain what I meant clearly. I've never heard Patrick talk about any particular strategy that gave him his start. You would know better since you know Patrick personally, but from the accounts he's written, it sounds like he basically had clients come to him thanks to his reputation.
Like, let me put it this way: If I were to create an exact clone of Bingo Card Creator the way it looked and behaved a few years back, do you think Joel Spolsky would come knocking at my digital door? I really, really don't think so. You were laughing at the idea that his "Hello World attached to an RNG" is hard to reproduce, but nobody ever thought that was the difficult part — it's the fame that followed from it that gave Patrick a base of good clients, and that seems to be harder to replicate or replace. At least that is my impression.
(Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to disparage anyone. It's just like I said earlier — this kind of "it's so easy" talk bothers me in the same way as lottery ads.)
Like, let me put it this way: If I were to create an exact clone of Bingo Card Creator the way it looked and behaved a few years back, do you think Joel Spolsky would come knocking at my digital door? I really, really don't think so. You were laughing at the idea that his "Hello World attached to an RNG" is hard to reproduce, but nobody ever thought that was the difficult part — it's the fame that followed from it that gave Patrick a base of good clients, and that seems to be harder to replicate or replace. At least that is my impression.
(Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to disparage anyone. It's just like I said earlier — this kind of "it's so easy" talk bothers me in the same way as lottery ads.)