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Why Build Toys

blog.aaronkharris.com

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Re: Why Build Toys

#31

Post by armchairhacker »

samstave wrote: post #25
spoonjim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks how temporary software is, especially Web software. If you don’t pay the hosting bill it’s gone. If you don’t upgrade to 64 but it’s useless. Essentially it’s a plate spinning on a stick and it needs constant attention to survive. Contrast that to a fine piece of furniture which barring fire or flood can just sit abandoned in a warehouse for 300 years and then be even more valuable than it was initially.

I'm 46. I have been working in SV since ~1996 I have had several existential crisis wondering *"what the fuck am I doing this for, we produce nothing."* --- This happened to me at FB, SF, Lucas, Brocade... I was like "yeah, im doing well professionally, making money - but at the end of the day, it was just "we produce nothing of intrinsic value" I find it ironic that NFTs are now the version of creating something of…

> we produce nothing of intrinsic value

Idk about that. You could say the same about a farmer or a banker or a teacher etc. Even the guys who build the Empire State building - there were probably hundreds of them, each only building a small part - and someday that will get lost in time also.

“Intrinsic value” is whatever you define it to be. I guess if you’re working for some ad-sales-management company making software for other big companies, then you probably don’t think you’re making much intrinsic value. But my philosophy is, just try to make the world a slightly better place to live in when you leave. And even a small library or project may help others working on bigger projects, which influence bigger projects, which cause real change.

Re: Why Build Toys

#32

Post by thearn4 »

rpastuszak wrote: post #2

I'm not sure about you, but the more experienced I am, as a developer or "builder", the smaller things I end up making. For instance, I launched a bunch of games that are, frankly, more fun to watch, than to play (e.g. an All-hands meeting simulator: https://rafsters.itch.io/all-hands ) or little tools this one https://sonnet.io/posts/reactive-hole/ (it's stupid, completely replaceable, but somewhat adorable). I come…

I think this is related to why I got into stain glass window making as a pandemic hobby. As everything I was working on felt ephemeral and physically disconnecting, it was refreshing to take on something both creative and tangible.

Re: Why Build Toys

#33

Post by gonehome »

hytdstd wrote: post #18
gonehome wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some of the appeal of urbit to me: https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr... That blog post is old, urbit does exist now.

This article is extremely long-winded. Do you mind providing a summary of what exactly appeals to you? Also: Is "C. Guy Yarvin" Curtis Yarvin?

Core idea is how can you design a software system that avoids the pitfalls of spinning plate on a stick that requires constant maintenance as the world shifts around it, 'the big ball of mud'.

One way to do this is to design a system where all events of the system can be replayed from start to finish in an immutable/repeatable way. Taking the advantages of state guarantees from functional language design and applying something similar to an entire OS.

You can design something that abstracts this general design away from specific implementations of pieces that interact with the underlying system today (*nix).

This podcast doesn't a decent job of introducing some of the concepts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/understanding-urbit/id...

It's a little hard to summarize in a really short comment because there's a lot of new/first principles thinking that doesn't analogize super cleanly to the existing software stack people are familiar with (which is why it's interesting).

Yeah that's Curtis Yarvin, I think his neo-reactionary politics are wrong [0], but the design and ideas behind urbit are good (and he's no longer directly involved in the project).

[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f...

Re: Why Build Toys

#34

Post by tdumitrescu »

spoonjim wrote: post #14
ehnto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an All-hands meeting simulator: Ha! Fantastic. > I come from a family with 4 generations of carpenters. It's a profession more similar to software engineering that most engineering jobs I can think of. The main difference is that in our domain so often the results of our work just don't feel real. That is the core issue I have with software development, it can feel ephemeral and extremely temporary. My remediation…

It sucks how temporary software is, especially Web software. If you don’t pay the hosting bill it’s gone. If you don’t upgrade to 64 but it’s useless. Essentially it’s a plate spinning on a stick and it needs constant attention to survive. Contrast that to a fine piece of furniture which barring fire or flood can just sit abandoned in a warehouse for 300 years and then be even more valuable than it was initially.

I dunno, as someone with a lot of antique furnishings in a 19th-century house, I'd say that there's quite a bit of ongoing maintenance to prevent the march of time and usual wear and tear from grinding everything to dust!

Re: Why Build Toys

#35

Post by [deleted] »

azhenley wrote: post #13

Exactly. I have a lot of the same feelings, so 6 weeks ago I wrote a similar blog post, "Why I prefer making making useless stuff". I haven't quite figured out how to convert my "useless stuff" into a company yet though... Blog post: https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/makinguselessstuff.html HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256867 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/n…

[deleted]

Re: Why Build Toys

#36

Post by slmjkdbtl »

It's insane people automatically use the word "useless" for anything that cannot directly or indirectly turn into capital or material gain, a lot of cases it just brings happiness directly (which is the desired result of any capital and material gain).

Re: Why Build Toys

#37

Post by forgotmypw17 »

samstave wrote: post #25
spoonjim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks how temporary software is, especially Web software. If you don’t pay the hosting bill it’s gone. If you don’t upgrade to 64 but it’s useless. Essentially it’s a plate spinning on a stick and it needs constant attention to survive. Contrast that to a fine piece of furniture which barring fire or flood can just sit abandoned in a warehouse for 300 years and then be even more valuable than it was initially.

I'm 46. I have been working in SV since ~1996 I have had several existential crisis wondering *"what the fuck am I doing this for, we produce nothing."* --- This happened to me at FB, SF, Lucas, Brocade... I was like "yeah, im doing well professionally, making money - but at the end of the day, it was just "we produce nothing of intrinsic value" I find it ironic that NFTs are now the version of creating something of…

I'm a little younger than you, so I want to ask this:

If it were up to you, alone or with a team you're in charge of, do you think you could come up with a piece of software which would be less ephemeral and more lasting, perhaps being able to work unadministered or requiring minimum administration for a while, and be usable AND useful for years without any major changes?

What would it look like, and what would its pieces be made of?

Re: Why Build Toys

#38

Post by akharris »

azhenley wrote: post #13

Exactly. I have a lot of the same feelings, so 6 weeks ago I wrote a similar blog post, "Why I prefer making making useless stuff". I haven't quite figured out how to convert my "useless stuff" into a company yet though... Blog post: https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/makinguselessstuff.html HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256867 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/n…

Fantastic post.

You say "haven't quite figured out" - does that imply there are things you wanted to convert but didn't see the path for, or that the question hasn't truly come up?

Re: Why Build Toys

#40

Post by saurik »

samstave wrote: post #25
spoonjim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks how temporary software is, especially Web software. If you don’t pay the hosting bill it’s gone. If you don’t upgrade to 64 but it’s useless. Essentially it’s a plate spinning on a stick and it needs constant attention to survive. Contrast that to a fine piece of furniture which barring fire or flood can just sit abandoned in a warehouse for 300 years and then be even more valuable than it was initially.

I'm 46. I have been working in SV since ~1996 I have had several existential crisis wondering *"what the fuck am I doing this for, we produce nothing."* --- This happened to me at FB, SF, Lucas, Brocade... I was like "yeah, im doing well professionally, making money - but at the end of the day, it was just "we produce nothing of intrinsic value" I find it ironic that NFTs are now the version of creating something of…

Someone who maintains an event space will find that they have to do the same tasks every day and that their hard-fought progress is often destroyed by the very events that they host; meanwhile, even their optimized routines will randomly become obsolete due to changing circumstance of construction, government, and behavior... and yet I don't think it would be fair that they are producing nothing of intrinsic value: the value of Facebook isn't the software you developed while working there, but (as they like to say) "the friends we made along the way".
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