61–70 of 192 posts
I’m stuck on the opening sentence. Family went to sleep in the morning so rest of the day is free? I must be missing something but that doesn’t make sense. Did the author chloroform them?
I agree with the title, but disagree with this: "When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software." The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done . That's it. The software is always in service to…
Aside from where you've only duplicated something that already exists (in which case why bother?), what kind of software would you be able to create to help me do my job that wouldn't also make me go 'wow'?
Any part of my job that I lack tools to help me with are the parts that seem impossible to have the tools for, so when you defy that understanding, 'wow' is inevitable.
> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream This is a habit I picked up from two people I respect greatly as programmers; Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow. Those guys both built their own little lands; Jon went as far as building a new language, a 3D game engine in that language, and has multiple game titles in-flight in the engine. I have a handful of projects that are simila…
> Those guys both built their own little lands Do you mean they created their own fictional geographic worlds (or parts of worlds)? That's amazing. Many - including Tolkien, I think - have started that way. Sometimes, the world finds out about it. Robert Louis Stevenson started with a map.
> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream This is how many artists have worked. They make something for themself, and one day they show it to someone else ... or they just get the urge to share it more widely, often without the hope that anyone will really be interested. Or they keep it for themself. I think Tolkien is in that group, for example. But don't get the wrong idea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very much for people open-sourcing their projects in terms of releasing the source code. Just don't accept patches or whatever, keep the repos closed
Unfortunately, and I think to great overall harm, GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration features. I was just having a discussion today with someone who would be fine open sourcing their code, but is uninterested in any contributions, questions, or community interaction. Since GitHub won’t allow that, their options are to host it somewhere themselves where nobody will see it, or just don’t publish…
And if the README explicitly says the project isn’t open to contributors nor feature requests, then you’re even less likely to see that (and have a very valid reason to politely close any issues on the unlikely scenario that someone might create one).
The vast majority of stuff on GitHub goes unnoticed by the vast majority of people. And only a very small minority of people ever interact with the few projects they do pull from GH.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, and I think to great overall harm, GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration features. I was just having a discussion today with someone who would be fine open sourcing their code, but is uninterested in any contributions, questions, or community interaction. Since GitHub won’t allow that, their options are to host it somewhere themselves where nobody will see it, or just don’t publish…
> GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration I wish they'd allow making issues and pull requests sponsor only. Could enable a business model.
> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream This is how many artists have worked. They make something for themself, and one day they show it to someone else ... or they just get the urge to share it more widely, often without the hope that anyone will really be interested. Or they keep it for themself. I think Tolkien is in that group, for example. But don't get the wrong idea…
That model depended on personal wealth or (more often) patronage. Because the supply of wealthy patrons was limited, it meant that you had fewer artists pursuing their visions. Everyone else needed to find menial jobs.
Now, we democratized access to patronage, but it means that to support yourself, you need to deliver what gets you the most clicks, not what your soul craves.
I sort of wish we still had both models, but I think that wealthy patrons have gone out of fashion in favor of spending money on crypto and AI.
I agree with the title, but disagree with this: "When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software." The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done . That's it. The software is always in service to…
> The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done. Aside from where you've only duplicated something that already exists (in which case why bother?), what kind of software would you be able to create to help me do my job that wouldn't also make me go 'wow'? Any part of my job that I lack tools to help me with are the parts that seem impossible to hav…
If we had stopped reiterating on the wheel our cars would drive on wooden logs.