A half decent app with only thousands of users might get that back in maybe 6 months.
I know I did and I wrote a very niche app and did no promotion what so ever. I have not made much on my app but it has paid for a couple of gadgets so far and I am still making a (very) little bit every month.
Lots of people aren't writing that. They don't have the skills to write that on Android either. But they're still counted in that survey as "Android Developers", yielding that HN title.
Lots of people aren't writing apps for third parties. As a third party dev myself, it's significantly easier to justify costs (even to people like my wife) than if I did self-published apps that were hobbling along
That's true.. I just find that owning a mac to be in the cost of doing business. That just maybe outside of the means of the average hobbyist developer.
