Finish your stuff • Hacker News Board

Re: Finish your stuff

#91

Post by stephengillie » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

clord wrote: post #84

diminish wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carpenter analogy is as bad as the "book author" analogy. You write a book and let it go. Nothing to support, all updates are to be paid by customers in a new release.

"Book author" is at least closer to the truth. There are editions and old copies floating out there, it's hard to estimate completion dates, and authors have many of the same copyright problems. The difference is that software must live in a dynamic and shifting 'house' where everything gets rearranged by vendors, probed for weaknesses by attackers, and new features are constantly demanded by the users. Solutions to…

Some books do have versions (textbooks et al), some books are out-of-date as soon as they are published (statistics, science). Many would benefit from a reduction in lines and becoming more concise. Some are a jumbled mess that's basically useless, but nobody wants to update them.

Re: Finish your stuff

#92

Post by Jimmy » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #5

"Real artists ship" "if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often I'm sure there are many others, but these ones keep me shipping.

>"if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late"

I think there's a lot of truth in this. I've been working on a video game on and off for the last year and a half. For most of the development time, I would agonize over every little detail and take weeks to implement even minor features, because I'm an Artist (TM) and genius takes time damn it. Finally, two weeks ago I said "fuck it, I'm just going to focus on getting things working as fast as possible and I'll make them good later." And I've never created content or implemented features as fast as I have in these past two weeks; I actually have a working demo, instead of just notes and an empty engine. None of it is what I consider "good" right now, but I know that it'll be good eventually.

Re: Finish your stuff

#93

Post by cafebeen » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #28

The point of the article is not "Finish your stuff", but "Tackle smaller problems".

That sounds more in line with the unix philosophy!

Re: Finish your stuff

#94

Post by ksk » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:15 PM UTC

netcraft wrote: post #51

Am I the only one that really hates the carpenter analogy? As someone who does woodworking on the side of my programming, there's a million reasons why it's a terrible way to think about software development. The chair doesn't have supported platforms, new security issues, or the need to be updated so that people keep buying the same chair. Someone else isn't going to have to come along later to maintain the chair an…

The analogy is perfectly valid for the point he's making. You seem to be confused about what the author is saying. "Finish your stuff" does not mean "Never Improve". Security issues or additional features have nothing to do with finishing a project.

Re: Finish your stuff

#95

Post by ksk » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

georgerobinson wrote: post #13

melling wrote: post #5

"Real artists ship" "if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often I'm sure there are many others, but these ones keep me shipping.

If you're embarrassed by the first version of your product (i.e. suppose it's buggy, or is lacking in it's UI) then it's probably not ready to ship? There is nothing worse than shipping a half-baked product.

It depends on how high your standards are. If you're a perfectionist then you're going to be forever embarrassed. Meanwhile the general public finds your product to be perfectly usable and useful, because they aren't running into any of the bugs that exist.

Re: Finish your stuff

#96

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

rumcajz wrote: post #61

emodendroket wrote: post #50

Now what if your home regularly changed in such a way that your old chairs didn't sit upright anymore? There are limits to the carpentry analogy.

If your chair covers the area of Los Angeles, it'll sure have problems with changing landscape. If it's a regular-sized chair, less so.

Yes, but now we've clearly abandoned the familiarity of the analogy, making it less clear how much value the analogy has in illuminating what we're trying to say.

Re: Finish your stuff

#97

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

daigoba66 wrote: post #68

netcraft wrote: post #51

Am I the only one that really hates the carpenter analogy? As someone who does woodworking on the side of my programming, there's a million reasons why it's a terrible way to think about software development. The chair doesn't have supported platforms, new security issues, or the need to be updated so that people keep buying the same chair. Someone else isn't going to have to come along later to maintain the chair an…

Taking this to the next level: I come across people all the time that put tremendous effort into building similes for... everything. Not every concept needs an analogy to be understood if we can explain things using correct and simple language.

    > Not every concept needs an analogy to be understood if we
    > can explain things using correct and simple language.

That's a pretty big linguistic 'if', actually... how do you come to understand the 'correct and simple language' in the first place?

Re: Finish your stuff

#98

Post by vidarh » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

jdimov9 wrote: post #67

This is absurd. A finished project is a dead project. If it isn't improving, it's dying. Never finish your projects (unless you're just doing homework). Software is a system. Systems of any non-trivial complexity are living things that must adapt and evolve. Constantly. (Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with abandoning a project. Gain as much as you can from your experience and quickly move on to something bet…

By that token a substantial proportion of the tools I rely on on a daily basis are dead.

(not least if you consider the actual contents of the linked article, which makes it clear that by "finish" he means to make it functionally complete, not to stop fixing bugs or e.g. ensuring it still compiles)

Re: Finish your stuff

#99

Post by Galrito » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

wainstead wrote: post #27

I thought the Unix philosophy embraced the idea of "small tools that do one thing really well." > Please join me in my effort and do finish your projects. Hear, hear. A friend and I hosted a "Finish it! Weekend" once (as opposed to a "Startup Weekend"). The idea was to get people together for one weekend and finish that last 10% or whatever of a project. Sadly we were the only two to show up. (And we both finished ou…

Can you please elaborate?

Re: Finish your stuff

#100

Post by pfortuny » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #80

pfortuny wrote: post #29

Oh, come on: software is usually much more than a table or a chair. It grows, it needs care, it is more like a plant than something static. What does it even mean to "finish" a program like 'ls' given the increasing complexity of filesystems with time?

The semantics of POSIX dirents haven't really changed, and any file system complexity is abstracted by the kernel's VFS subsystem to provide generic data in all cases. So, yes, it is possible for something like 'ls' to be finished, or at least for really long times.

Ok, yes, my example was not the best one.

But at the same time, consider things like UTF-8, localization, etc. They appear at the least expected moment and someone has to do something unless the tool becomes useless.

I understand you get the idea, though.