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What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

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Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#491

Post by cygx »

mrb wrote: post #446
doktrin wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have such a strong objection to someone spending their own free time to simplify and / or mimic [insert unix tool functionality here]. It clearly serves a purpose and it's apparently useful. Most importantly, it exists , so there's no need to argue over how you think it should have been implemented. I'm sure if you were to release your own [script / wrapper], someone would find use for it, in the same mann…

I know it someone's right to do this, of course. I object because I come from an environment (software industry) where I have spent hundreds of hours undoing people's poor jobs where they wasted time and money reimplementing (incorrectly) library functions, system commands, etc. Because of this personal experience, I reacted the same way many reacted when seeing her script. So, I decided to explain to her and attempt…

I object because I come from an environment [...] where I have spent hundreds of hours undoing people's poor jobs where they wasted time and money reimplementing [...] system commands

What you fail to take into account is that there's definitely a niche for Node.js-based development tools such as this script: The GNU userland is not ubiquitous.

Node.js did not come with a system command to search and replace across files - now it does.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#492

Post by ecdavis »

mrb wrote: post #200

Heather, I agree that people are unnecessarily rude to you. Don't sob. Your code shows you are already a more capable programmer than most of the ones I interview. No one has given you a clear answer as to why your code is reinventing the wheel, so allow me to do it politely. I took every single example from your README, and show you below how everything can be reimplemented with sed -r (nice extended regex syntax, m…

Why are people so opposed to reinventing the wheel?

In a professional context, I understand[1], but this is a personal project someone wrote to scratch their own itch. Why is it unjustifiable? I can think of plenty of reasons to reimplement something but I think the burden is really on you to say why it shouldn't be done. If you think replace is a waste of time just don't use it - simple as that.

[1] I've spent the last two years maintaining an application written in a homegrown web framework - don't get me started.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#493

Post by muyuu »

mrb wrote: post #408
mrb wrote: post #200

Heather, I agree that people are unnecessarily rude to you. Don't sob. Your code shows you are already a more capable programmer than most of the ones I interview. No one has given you a clear answer as to why your code is reinventing the wheel, so allow me to do it politely. I took every single example from your README, and show you below how everything can be reimplemented with sed -r (nice extended regex syntax, m…

Some of my examples can be further simplified (no -print0, no xargs), without a perf issue ("{} +" passes multiple filenames as arguments), with GNU find which is standard on Linux: replace 'var' 'let' . -r find . -type f -exec sed -ri 's,var,let,g' {} + replace 'var' 'let' . -r --include="*.js" find . -type f -name '*.js' -exec sed -ri 's,var,let,g' {} + replace 'var' 'let' . -r --exclude="*.min.js,*.py" find . -typ…

You don't need to write a 173 line js script, in the same way you don't need to write the thousands of lines of C code behind find or sed.

You just use it.

Let's face it. Most people will never bother learning shell commands in and out. I've been a *nix user for 20 years and I still have to be checking man pages, and I often stumble upon basic shell command options running differently in different shells.

Other than for sysadmins, shell commands are going the way of the dodo. This isn't new, it's been happening for many years already. Increasingly capable computer people from the newer generations will be focusing their skills and time elsewhere. Arguing against this reeks of grumpy old coder bitterness. I know my shell stuff and it serves me well. I use vi/vim daily. I don't impose my usage patterns or expect that something "existing" means it's appropriate for everybody.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#494

Post by dasil003 »

paulbjensen wrote: post #474
wereHamster wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it (scientifically documented) that if (a software project) A is threatened by B then supporters of A start to bash on developers and users of B? Because that's what I see here. node.js is very much a competitor to rails, and Steve Klabnik is very close to rails.

Agreed. I wrote this blog post: http://paulbjensen.co.uk/posts/2012/07/11/thoughts-on-rails-... Then Tony Arcieri wrote this rebuttal: http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/08/debunking-nodejs-gis... He made some good points in his post, but the snarkiness was in my opinion a bit uncalled for. Being labelled a Rails Enthusiast when I had worked with Rails for over 4 years (2007-2011), 2 of those at New Bamboo (a big R…

It's shocking the historical parallels between Node vs Rails and Rails vs Java. You'd think given the history of Rails that its practitioners (me being one for 7 years) would be more careful about dismissing a new technology for not being as "mature" and that you can "do all the same stuff" in Ruby.

I mean lets be honest: there is no outright revolution in Node anymore than Rails was a revolution, rather it's a matter of bringing useful ideas to the table in a convenient package. Node has particular strengths that Ruby does poorly, and we need to be intellectually honest about that rather than contorting ourselves to find ways to justify why ruby is always >=.

A lot of this animosity seems to come from a passion for the craft and subconscious fear of perhaps not using the best tool, and thus a need to justify to oneself why another tool is inferior. However if you look dispassionately, most of these conclusions are reached from highly asymmetrical knowledge and experience, and often rest on matters of taste. The hatred of Javascript for instance, is largely a matter of taste since its prototypal inheritance gives it a similar dynamic power to Ruby, just slightly uglier.

All that said, your original post also seems to come ever so slightly from a defensive position. Some arguments don't seem well argued, like why you thinks Rails is not good for APIs and heavy JS front-end (Rails has never been great with its Javascript, but it also mostly does the right thing to stay out of your way).

In any case though, I think we all have a tendency to overthink this stuff (me included). If the goal is to do good work, I think 1% of your time should be spent looking at new ideas and latching onto interesting new things, and 99% should be spent actually executing the craft.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#495

Post by brazzy »

chris_wot wrote: post #439
brazzy wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can, but I suspect that if positivity is the #1 priority, you're pretty likely to see issues ignored or hand-waved away.

No more so than if you were extremely negative and played the blame game. Ignoring issues is not what I'd call positive though. That's just delusion.

Being positive in the face of unrealistic deadlines is exactly that, delusion, and it's a pretty damn common and popular one in a large percentage of all software projects.

Look, I'm not saying that a positive attitude is bad, just that it definitely shouldn't be your #1 priority as proposed in the first comment I was replying to.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#496

Post by dasil003 »

michaelwww wrote: post #289

I hate to say this -- as an older person -- the only solution is to get a thicker skin, because people on occasion are going to be assholes to you. Even good people in a moment of snark. Even when they completely misunderstand what you did and that it is good. And worse, there are those who just tear down anything. It's just a fact of life. I suggest you read Feynman's "What do you care what other people think?" It h…

Spot on, this does get easier as one gets older, but one thing that makes it harder is Twitter itself. The nature of Twitter seems to create a primary-school-like atmosphere because of the short format and asymmetrical following mechanism. When you don't have the bidirectional communication it creates an effect like young children or people with underdeveloped social skills where you don't see peoples reactions and have a poor sense of what's really going on around you.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#497

Post by brazzy »

huhtenberg wrote: post #488
huhtenberg wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How nice of them. Makes you wonder how many apologies are outstanding.

To clarify - apologies to other people . There's no such thing as accidental one-off snobbery.

Sure you're not falling victim to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error ?

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#498

Post by paisawalla »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #292
kyro wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with people with Asperger's and Autism in a clinical setting. I'm not talking out of my ass.

While you might not be, you're probably the exception. The typical interaction sequence is: 1. Someone is rude on the internet. 2. "Ooh, look, undiagnosed ASD, lol, most software devs are ASD." 3. Self-applause, occasionally followed by discussion about whether Asperger's is different than Autism or whether it's a spectrum disorder, occasionally someone mentions the new version of DSM. (Sometimes this really bothers…

It's not just rudeness that triggers this response -- it's when someone displays a severe doesn't get it moment. The most significant moment on HN I've had of this is when someone tried to argue that sexism can't exist in tech because there's a Wikipedia page that lists 50 women with significant contributions to the field.

That sort of thing makes me wonder, if after 20-40 years of being part of our society, that is your understanding of one of the major grievances held by people out there, then there is a missing connection. You don't have to agree with the sentiment or conclusion, but if you can't even understand the complaint then you are either woefully sheltered or perhaps it's time to consider cognitive deficiencies.

And this sort of failure mode happens all the fucking time in this community.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#499

Post by Mutinix »

biesnecker wrote: post #343
talklittle wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot harder to be nice Until all eyes are on you, and you know they're calling for blood. Then it becomes very easy.

Not always. Don't underestimate the strength of pride (though in this case, over a tweet, you're probably right).

"though in this case, over a tweet, you're probably right"

Well, maybe not: https://twitter.com/zeeg/status/294305445521268736

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