The competent software engineer would understand that spending a week implementing a buggy, ill-optimized version of the algorithm would cost more than the purchase price could ever be (unless it's a ridiculously high price like $100K). The fact that it would be "fun" is probably a hard sell towards the client.

I guess I made my point badly.

Implementing algorithms is what software developers do. If, as a software developer, I'm just a middle man between the client and the people implementing everything on algorithmia.com, it's kind of stupid for me to even be involved - the client should hire the people posting to algorithmia directly.

No, you just had a bad point that you'll come to realize if you ever have to manage a team or company.

More often than not, you outsource items that are not the highest value projects your resources could be spent on. Or, you simply cannot afford to hire a specialist for a specific need. Try to find me experts for some of the pattern recognition algorithms offered who will work at your shitty startup, your shitty big-co with minimal tech wing, or your random mid-sized in the middle of nowhere. I just described 95% of companies on the planet.

And to second relix's point, try to justify implementing something that may have taken years to optimize, even if you think you can do it better. Also, do you want to maintain it? What happens if/when the company loses you? Would they rather have some poorly documented, poorly optimized in house version with nobody around who knows how it works or have a contract with another party they can count on for maintenance and support?

Is this always the case? No. Sometimes it's a core function you want to develop in house. But, it's usually considered.

As a developer, a big step in growth is realizing how to best spend your time and resources, and realizing that contracting implementation of X to further speed up building Y is a choice you'll often have to make.

The condescending tone is completely uncalled for.

Fair enough. Otherwise, does that help shed any light on this side? Thoughts?

There's a balance to be had though with every project between IP/licensing concerns, the implementation of the algorithm itself may not be appropriate for all hardware / software combinations, and cost vs. implementation time and complexity of algorithm.

Component reuse is generally preferable to re-implementation, but it's not a blind creed to follow.

You also have to account for the additional cost you'll be paying for data transfer and http requests to Algorithmia's API. I doubt a week of a developer's time is more expensive than a lifetime of those expenses and the fees Algorithmia charges.

But writing your own algorithms is so last week bro!

I have to agree. I can imagine the exact type of person to make use of such a service, and can see a considerable hype following becoming the market. The creators no doubt had the best of intentions in mind, but I think it does prey on the uniformed, even if unintentionally.

I'm also wondering who exactly would use this service. Any worthy developer should be able to read a description / paper on an algorithm he needs and then implement it in their language of choice.

Also, a bulk of the work would probably go to massaging your input to satisfy the input constraints of this web service. If you go that far, you might as well implement the rest of the algorithm yourself.

Maybe instead of an Amazon-style store, it could be more of craigslist/elance/topcoder type of store – people submit the exact classes/data/input they have, with the desired output. Developers write code (and the platform checks input/output validity), and the submitter can then haggle with the coder with the best score for the fee to pay. I guess it could be used as an outsourcing tool for companies that can't be bothered or don't have the brains to develop these kinds of things. Just an idea.

You bring an interesting point specially because we built this service for developers. Algorithmia was created to allow subject matter experts to provide their knowledge and share/sell it to the world. An expert in computer vision might not be an expert in path planning algorithms but both of these can be combined for things like autonomous vehicles. The goal is to allow deep individual specialization (as most researchers/algorithm devs want to do) and yet be able to leverage the deep specialization of others. Algorithms in Algorithmia can call other algorithms in the library directly which allows for the creation of new innovative meta solutions. I don't believe this takes away at all from the developer experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here is so 20th Century