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When I see a project that reinvents the wheel I tend to think that the author needed a very particular wheel and decided to start with first principles. And even if it seems useless to me - open sourcing it lets me see how this wheel was created, and maybe learn something from it.
And of course sometimes someone reinvents `grep` as brilliantly as `ack` and I end up using it every day.
https://twitter.com/harthvader/status/293829635823792128
Main justification is the nicer syntax. I agree it's nicer, but would approach it by wrapping sed, not re-implementing in Node.js from scratch.
I don't think that excuses the ridicule, though.
1. "Hur hur, sed piped with other tools already does this, you loser, why did you waste your time?"
2. "Cool, a different take on sed written in Javascript. They've written some basic doco and made a npm package, I might try it."
Ignore #1 online and in-person, be friends with #2.
People who adhere to type 1 behaviour are alien to me. I fundamentally don't understand what their motivation is to respond with such harsh criticism. You've liberated some close source, personal tool, into the public domain. There's some group of people, perhaps in the long-tail, that will use this tool, or learn from the source code. Clearly people have expressed interest in the tool (74 stars and 5 forks).
Again, ignore #1, friend #2.
I'm curious : what is the use case for this utility ? If I look at the README, it says : > Modifies files when matches are found Just like sed's -i option (except that -i allows you to specify a backup extension just in case) > Recursive search on directories with -r I usually use find with sed, so it's not so much a problem (and it actually allows to filter the files by extension, exclude directories, etc, which is…
That's what you and the people mocking this project have missed.
Well, there's also the old idea of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it." Or the idea of constructive criticism. Or the idea of contributing useful patches to the project.
So yes, there is something you and the armchair experts missed: software doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the people behind the software might have some emotional investment in their work.
As for the original project author, it bears mentioning that if you can't handle ridicule, don't appear in public. Someone, somewhere, will find a reason to mock you. It might be your choice of language, your formatting style, your_use_of_long_variable_names, UseOfCamelCase, too much/too little abstraction of methods, the colour of your hair, your choice of footwear, too much/too little hair, or that your name isn't common.
Mocking people has never led to things getting better.
I'm curious : what is the use case for this utility ? If I look at the README, it says : > Modifies files when matches are found Just like sed's -i option (except that -i allows you to specify a backup extension just in case) > Recursive search on directories with -r I usually use find with sed, so it's not so much a problem (and it actually allows to filter the files by extension, exclude directories, etc, which is…
Yeah you missed the point of the article. It's not about the usefulness of the project, it's about why does notorious developers like steveklabnik (rails core team) and dcramer (lots of django related projects) are publicly bashing this project without any reason. It's rude and childish.
Why would anyone want to work with Steve?
If you are going to put something in the public space, you have to be ready for any trolls in the vicinity to take a dump on it. It's not fair, but it's the economy of attention and identity at work.
I'll try to keep this in mind next time I take to twitter to unleash 140 characters on rage on something that someone has made and cares about.
As for haters on the Internet, yeah, welcome to the Internet. If you do something, chances are someone hates you. Why? They are jealous that you are getting attention instead of them. They could write a better version of grep, but are too unmotiviated, lazy, or dumb. So instead they trash your version. Attention flows back to them, they look smart in front of their friends, and ???, profit! You don't have to play a part in their fantasy, though. Just ignore them and let them bask in the idiocy of their idiot friends.
Or, if they have actionable feedback ("line 34 is indented wrong"), fix it and send them a thank you. Investing any more thought than one of those options, though, is a waste of time and mental energy.