461–470 of 501 posts
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ kids these days can't handle a little 𝕵𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗
Looks pretty great to me. I have a great book called Fraktur Mon Amour. Unfortunately it is out of print but if you can still get it somewhere I wholeheartedly recommend it.
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What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying requests like this.
It's sometimes not just about money. Any organisation that alows individuals and teams to freely pick and choose tools will end up with a huge pile of semi-forgotten systems and organisational knowledge spread over multiple wikis, sharepoint sites, trello boards, monday projects and word docs on shared drives and dropboxes. Seen it happen multiple times. Corparate use of "personal/hobbyist" free tiers of popular tool…
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Is an open-source piece of software more extensible than closed-source? If so, then if the goal is to maximize extensibility, then open-source is required.
Hardly. Extending a piece of software requires generally extensive familiarization with the codebase, possibly ranging into millions of lines. On the other hand, a well documented plugin or scripting system, which sits on top of the existing domain logic and is well documented and full of examples, generally is an excellent way to allow extending the base app. The base app can be open or closed source. Without script…
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I'm curious: were you expecting that my comment offer "an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job."? If so, why?
The thread, as I understand it, goes something like: 1. The company should buy you this. 2. They may not. 3. If they didn't, that would be a concern. 4. Why? 5. Argument that the company should buy extra software. Point 5 is off topic. There might be a good job that wouldn't buy you extra software and that wouldn't really be a concern. It's like if someone said "Your job is bad if they don't offer free lunch". I migh…
After re-reading the thread, it is clear that your 'understanding' (as written above) of the thread is inaccurate.
I'll annotate the first five comments in the thread, with your 'understandings' and my responses:
Original post:
> allenleein: "Early user here. Obsidian is literally the best
> app in 2020 so far IMO. -Blazingly fast -Clean UI -Free -Sync
> [...] -Great community"
Your 'understanding':
> 1. The company should buy you this.
Follow-up comment:
> usr1106: "[it is] Not really [free]. The license says you are
> not allowed to take notes about work you get compensated for.
> So free only for 100% hobby projects.
>
> Working in a start-up I don't have big 100% hobby projects
> that would require a lot of note keeping. YMMV
Your 'understanding':
> 2. They may not [buy you this]
> codezero: I'd be more concerned if you had a hard time getting
> reimbursed for this kind of software at your job.
Your 'understanding':
> 3. If they didn't, that would be a concern.
Follow-up comment:
> libria: "What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still
> have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously
> Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying
> requests like this.""
Your 'understanding':
> Why?
Some of your other comments in this thread refer to this framing and value judgment. That's fine, but other comments are in no way obligated to agree or buy-in to that framing.
Follow-up comment:
> xpe: I'll respond with a connected set of questions...
>
> Is it worth the time to deny a (well intentioned) $150 request
> made by a software developer who costs a company (for example)
> $150K total (salary, benefits, and fixed costs)? $150 is 0.1%
> of $150K.
>
> What are the benefits and costs? Some questions to ask include:
>
> [... time spent? likely effects? consistency in other areas? ...]
>
> I think my overarching point is, again, illustrated by questions:
> What does a company truly value? Are they mindful and realistic
> about their costs and benefits? [... P.S. ... snip]
Your 'understanding':
5. Argument that the company should buy extra software.
A charitable reading (see the HN Guidelines) of my comment would see that I was responding to this part of libria's comment: "What's the concern for?" To put it very simply, I would be concerned by a company that was not mindful and realistic about their costs and benefits. Why? It is simple: I value working for mindful and realistic companies.
In summary, your understanding is inaccurate.
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Do you create/release/maintain any free software? Or do you just feel entitled to have all the software that individual people do create for free?
I don't think that's relevant, I don't feel entitled to anything. My point was just that the $4's would add up. There are 2286 packages on my PC at the moment, which ones should I pay for? I can't even imagine earning that much money. Moreover, are you suggesting that people should feel guilty for using free software?
Of those 2286 packages on your PC, how many of them are written by individual software engineers who are trying to make a living by writing software? And how many of them contribute to your overall wellbeing? I'm guessing that 99% of those packages are used by programs that you yourself don't use, that just come packaged with your OS or some other product. The other 1%, yes, I think you should think about paying for.
We live in a world where a certain kind of extractive personality--Zuckerberg, Gates, Ellison--makes billions from their software, because they are willing to be an asshole-to-the-hilt with their anti-competitive, unethical, and often downright illegal behavior. The 'nice guys' who write and maintain your compiler (if gcc) or editor (if vim or emacs) or scripting language (virtually all of them) and any number of other tools that we use daily, will struggle to pay their hospital bills in retirement. And yet people balk at $4/mo for software that they might use for years. And even if they only used it for 1 month, that $4 is inconsequential compared to the other factors (like learning curve, time investment, etc).
I do think people should be spending some money on their software tools each year. Maybe 1% of their income? That's around $100/mo, which seems like an awful lot, but only in comparison to the current price they're paying of $0. But think of how much better your tools would be, if the developer who makes them could earn a living wage from them, without having to embrace the capitalistic ideals that make us hate computers and software in the firstplace.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious: were you expecting that my comment offer "an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job."? If so, why?
The thread, as I understand it, goes something like: 1. The company should buy you this. 2. They may not. 3. If they didn't, that would be a concern. 4. Why? 5. Argument that the company should buy extra software. Point 5 is off topic. There might be a good job that wouldn't buy you extra software and that wouldn't really be a concern. It's like if someone said "Your job is bad if they don't offer free lunch". I migh…
> A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument
> and an informal fallacy based on giving the
> impression of refuting an opponent's argument,
> while actually refuting an argument that was not
> presented by that opponent. - Wikipedia
I'm going to have some fun looking up what others call that kind of rhetoric.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's relevant, I don't feel entitled to anything. My point was just that the $4's would add up. There are 2286 packages on my PC at the moment, which ones should I pay for? I can't even imagine earning that much money. Moreover, are you suggesting that people should feel guilty for using free software?
The whole discussion was about how 'expensive' this particular software was, at $4/mo. $4 is the price of a cup of coffee. If the software makes you more productive than one cup of coffee per month would, then it seems like $4 is not expensive at all. Of those 2286 packages on your PC, how many of them are written by individual software engineers who are trying to make a living by writing software? And how many of th…
I really dislike this cup of coffee that is commonplace. Buying coffee from Starbucks is really expensive! Coffee costs about 30c to make yourself. Some people buy coffee every day - over a year that can up to a month's rent in a world-class city.
Personally I have paid for a lot of software over the years. I think 95% of the time I have ended up getting almost no value out of those purchases, especially with iOS apps and PC games I never play. I wish I had not been so frivolous with those $4 coffee-cup Steam purcahses and instead spent all that money donating to open source projects which I actually do use every day. In the future I will be trying to do so.
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Kids? I'm probably old enough to vehemently request that you kindly get off my greensward. But let us not get bogged down with ageism, the real question is what kind of monster uses both cyan and magenta text-shadow diagonally offset against each other???? !!! .... ? :-)
Any commenter with a greensward is a friend of mine! The answer is Google, sort of: https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/getting_started#ena... The anaglyph effect is what I tweaked. It's not too unreadable with simpler fonts--I 100% acknowledge readability takes a massive hit with both the fraktur and the anaglyph. Ultimately, though, my goal with that blog is mostly to have fun, so the expressive aspect is impo…
Then I went back in again, and started poking around with the element inspector. Then we had this discussion, and I am still not sure what the page content was actually about, but I have a sense that I might have found it interesting if I had stuck with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardly. Extending a piece of software requires generally extensive familiarization with the codebase, possibly ranging into millions of lines. On the other hand, a well documented plugin or scripting system, which sits on top of the existing domain logic and is well documented and full of examples, generally is an excellent way to allow extending the base app. The base app can be open or closed source. Without script…
A piece of software being open-source does not preclude it from also having a plugin or scripting system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A piece of software being open-source does not preclude it from also having a plugin or scripting system.
Sure! But the question was "is an open source software more extensible...". And for most situations where software is used the answer is no.
As someone who writes plugins, being able to see "behind the curtain" is very helpful, especially for taking advantage of un-documented features.