I've been thinking about learning Crystal recently and using it for a personal project. However, now that I have lots of experience with Node.js, Golang and others, I'm torn between the "use what's mature" and "learn a new language" decision. Sure, I'm using Crystal now to learn a new language, but what if this becomes a serious project? Anyhow, I agree with this blog post somewhat but it's always good to expand your repertoire of tools.
Life is too short to depend on unstable software
61–70 of 175 posts
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#62Innovative tech companies are dominated by business analysts and product managers. Shoddy specs are commonplace, and it's crazy at work because big customers push hard deadlines that have to be met to prevent them from switching to That Competitor's app. They are not empty threats. Unstable software is just the reflection of an unstable industry.
J2EE entirely spec’ed out a reproducible way to create and deploy reliable software reliably. It is so reliable that no-one uses it, except companies paying $14k per developer per month.
The truth is, the cost of unreliable software is not the same as the cost of an unreliable bridge or plane. And during the ascending phase of the Schumpeter cycle (70-year economic cycle related to an industry), entrepreneurs who move swiftly with agility always win.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#63I've been thinking about learning Crystal recently and using it for a personal project. However, now that I have lots of experience with Node.js, Golang and others, I'm torn between the "use what's mature" and "learn a new language" decision. Sure, I'm using Crystal now to learn a new language, but what if this becomes a serious project? Anyhow, I agree with this blog post somewhat but it's always good to expand your…
There are well established projects using Crystal. At least I've heard of one: Invidious [1], an alternative frontend for YouTube. If your project becomes serious it might as well work for you too!
(I don't know anything about Crystal)
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#64I've been thinking about learning Crystal recently and using it for a personal project. However, now that I have lots of experience with Node.js, Golang and others, I'm torn between the "use what's mature" and "learn a new language" decision. Sure, I'm using Crystal now to learn a new language, but what if this becomes a serious project? Anyhow, I agree with this blog post somewhat but it's always good to expand your…
There are well established projects using Crystal. At least I've heard of one: Invidious [1], an alternative frontend for YouTube. If your project becomes serious it might as well work for you too! (I don't know anything about Crystal) [1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Hey! Thanks for this! I've always loved the Ruby syntax so I'm excited to see what Crystal has to offer. Thanks for sending this over!
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#65don’t ever let your career depend on an unstable platform and tooling unless you directly profit from that instability. Woah, unstable platform is bad, unless it makes you money? Am I reading this right?
Yes. This is why I charge by the hour adhoc when I have to deal with windows. I can’t estimate all the weird ass problems in my initial quote.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#66Last part of the piece of advice was a bit humorous (sad but true):
> And one final piece of advice: don’t ever let your career depend on an unstable platform and tooling unless you directly profit from that instability.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#67Proprietary software with no competitors (Nikon Elements Cough) creates situations where you have to depend on very unstable and buggy software.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything should not need support. The fact that most everything needs support is a symptom of how crazy the software industry is.
I keep hearing people say that, but how do you propose we write software that has no bugs and does everything perfectly right the first time? That seems impossible.
The first time? Sure, nothing ever gets it right the first time, but over time software should converge on being bug free and not requiring any support at all. Free-with-paid-support has a perverse incentive against this.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#69Users of only "stable" FOSS releases almost never contribute, in code, or to its health or longevity. They are leeching it, sometimes over decades. They don't contribute to testing either, since they just consume releases and ignore development, then wonder loudly why there are bugs. Don't be that guy... if you want your dependencies to have a long life being maintained, find some time to contribute. Leeching is not…
I would advise against calling users leeches. A product is meaningless without users, and those users that do go out of their way to file helpful bug reports should be lauded not disparaged.
The phrase leeching implies an entity is consuming a host's life force in some way (seeders's bandwidth in the torrenting analogy), simply using the product does not meet this criteria.
Re: Life is too short to depend on unstable software
#70Would be interesting to see ratings of software much like the moody's index for financial products.