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Finish your stuff

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Re: Finish your stuff

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

primitivesuave wrote: post #11

There is a whole class of rhetorically attractive analogies comparing programming to the building of physical things like furniture, bridges, and buildings. They usually overlook that software requirements vary greatly and can be quite complex, while the physical requirements of a chair are not going to vary much across chair designs. Modification of software requires no physical resources and can be executed at scal…

I think the problem with those analogies is much simpler and more fundamental - they assume writing software is the "building" part. It's not. Construction is what compilers do for us. What we do is design. Architecture, if you must. And we can release a new version of a software every day instead of every year like other industries, because compilers do their work fast and effectively for free.

Re: Finish your stuff

#42

Post by TeMPOraL »

xelxebar wrote: post #13

I get the problem with feature creep (who wants a text editor that also implements support for tetris?! ^•^), but as others have pointed out, that sentiment probably isn't precise enough to be all that useful. Being a command line junkie, what stands out to me is the composability of my tools. This composability, I feel, is the key that let's us separate concerns and write small, standalone tools.

> who wants a text editor that also implements support for tetris?! ^•^

Well, I do :) - given that said editor also has better UX than mainstream operating systems (in terms of efficiency, extensibility and interoperability), and it's because of that it is possible for someone to implement Tetris in it.

Re: Finish your stuff

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

gcoda wrote: post #29
rkuykendall-com wrote: post #28

> Imagine the carpenters were like programmers. You bought a chair. You bought it because you've inspected it and found out that it fulfills all your needs. Then, every other day, the carpenter turns up at work and tries to improve how they make chairs! Why can't they just stop changing how chairs are made? I like my chair, but I go back to the store after a few years and they're all different! Carpenters, finish you…

That is how market works, people not satisfied with sitting experience and constantly trying to improve on that, yet QWERTY layout is still in use by 99.9%, it is enough to satisfy typing needs and good enough experience so nothing changes for ages.

> That is how market works, people not satisfied with sitting experience and constantly trying to improve on that

Not sure if you're joking here, but if not - then no, it's not because of that. Companies jsut make new, "better" versions, market them hard, and are happy because when they pull the old ones from the stores, you have no choice but to buy one of the new ones.

Re: Finish your stuff

#44

Post by georgeecollins »

What I love about games is that at some point they have to ship. They used to have to go in boxes. But even now that they don't, there is a still a date when they have to go live in stores. Deadlines terrify me and they create great anxiety in my life. But ultimately they are cathartic.

Re: Finish your stuff

#45

Post by za_creature »

1001101 wrote: post #17

Somebody has given up a significant amount of their time to give you something that's free as in beer and speech. You get at least what you pay for, don't ask for your money back.

The one thing you can expect to receive in exchange for said significant donation of your time is recognition for your work.

If your work consists of half-finished code that you then attempt to pass off as a usable product, the expected reward is shunning.

There's a difference between pushing your CS101 homework to github and publishing your package to npm. As with academia, once you publish you implicitly vouch for the quality of your work, and your reputation is permanently tied to it.

Re: Finish your stuff

#46

Post by gkya »

> Imagine the carpenters were like programmers. You bought a chair. You bought it because you've inspected it and found out that it fulfills all your needs. Then, every other day, the carpenter turns up at your place and makes a modification to the chair.

505 Bad Analogy. Carpenters work all the time on new designs and better chairs. When a programmer releases a new version of his program, it's like when the carpenter made a new chair and put it up on sale on Amazon or ebay (aren't these kind-of like package managers for physical goods?). You may want to buy that new one, but you may also not. Similarly, nobody forces software upgrades down your throat. But sometimes the people change, they want to sit on divans or nail-beds instead of chairs, the carpenters follow the trends and produce those instead of chairs, and people expect to find these when they come to visit you. You can say "sit on chairs or f*ck off!", but you can't avoid the consequences: loneliness. Similarly, you can hold on to your select programs in select versions, maybe backport patches for them, but the protocols change, the services change, world goes on. You may say eff-off and stick to your programs, but the consequence is that it'll become harder to share experiences and information with others, both ways. Nobody fixes or modifies your stuff should you not want them to, they may try hard to sell and bug you, but you always are the one that buys. Mobile phones do by default, but you can opt-out.

Re: Finish your stuff

#47

Post by alkonaut »

software is never complete. It might be usable (in the world outside personal projects perhaps "shippable") but never complete.

I think the point the author is making is to not start projects that aren't likely to have a minimum viable product that is usable and achievable within reasonable time.

I'm not so sure. It's more fun to write the skeleton of a compiler and abandon, than it is to write something minimal sometimes. The only (proper) way to learn what tradeoffs exist in sql database design is to make one. Making a sql parser, btrees and so on is HARD but rewarding. After a week you'll know a lot about a lot of things. But you likely won't have a working SQL database. If you aren't a very special kind of crazy you won't reach the finish line and you'll abandon it somewhere along the way. So was it all a waste? Is exploratory hobby programming somehow a bad practice? I can't see that it is.

Re: Finish your stuff

#48

Post by nfriedly »

gkya wrote: post #46

> Imagine the carpenters were like programmers. You bought a chair. You bought it because you've inspected it and found out that it fulfills all your needs. Then, every other day, the carpenter turns up at your place and makes a modification to the chair. 505 Bad Analogy. Carpenters work all the time on new designs and better chairs. When a programmer releases a new version of his program, it's like when the carpente…

> nobody forces software upgrades down your throat

Windows 10 does, as does every SaaS web app out there.

Re: Finish your stuff

#49

Post by vortico »

Jtsummers wrote: post #32
vortico wrote: post #12

Any software tool that is deemed as "complete" is not really complete. Even TeX, which will be releasing its final version when Donald Knuth feels the end of his life is near, is not complete because it is constantly expanded with reimplementations like XeLaTeX and LuaTeX and with thousands of plugins in constant development. GNU utilities like ls are not complete because they are built on top of operating system sys…

Re TeX: That's actually covered by the author. TeX itself is complete. Knuth isn't adding new features, instead the version number is converging to pi (new digit added) with bug fixes [0]. The other variations are not TeX (they're reimplementations) or they're extension built on top of the completed TeX program. [0] https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb11-4/tb30knut.pdf [PDF, in case it wasn't obvious]

Yes, that's what I meant to imply. So yes, TeX is finished software but the boundary between what is known as TeX and "not TeX" is blurred by the thousands of extensions in the TeX environment that people must use when using anything beyond the basics.

Basically what I'm saying with that example is that you can draw a line around some code and say "this is TeX, and it is finished." But what users mean when they say "I use TeX" will never be finished and will be forever expanding.

TeX is the hardest to argue because it is probably the most stable software in existence for what it's capable of, so any other software you use is much less finished.

Re: Finish your stuff

#50

Post by fillskills »

The whole point of software is that it is soft. Malleable. Ductile. Thats the strength and sometimes a weakness. It makes software hard to deal with. See the many late projects. But that also makes it awesome because you can change it with changing requirements.

Yes, it’s important to generally finish what you start. Equally important is the capacity to accept, learn and make changes

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