It's friction, but, really. It came with their computer. You click a bunch of buttons and it's installed. The size of the install is irrelevant.
But I still have difficulty believing these casual-developers-but-not-programmers exist in great numbers. Have people told you "I was going to try your thing, but it asked for this weird gcc thing"?
Absolutely. I run into that frequently with my own projects. It's such a bummer to have to tell someone to go through this whole process for such a small `gem install` command.
But I still have difficulty believing these casual-developers-but-not-programmers exist in great numbers. Have people told you "I was going to try your thing, but it asked for this weird gcc thing"?