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Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

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Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#11

Post by raddan »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #6
pif wrote: post #4

Pie cannot be duplicated. Even if you're offering me a worse pie than I ate yesterday, either I enjoy yours or I have no pie. Software, on the other side, is duplicated on a whim. If you are not offering me new solutions that I need, I'm not even going to bother looking at it.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

It’s not that pie can’t be duplicated, it’s that there are real costs to the duplication. And making pies precisely the same is surprisingly hard (pie is my favorite treat and I make them all the time).

Not so with software. Duplication and distribution are essentially free. Copies are perfect replicas. Why not then insist on the best version? Also, with food, the varied experience of slightly different pies is fun (“variety is the spice of life”). Unless I expected variation in my software, I would be extremely annoyed that it did not do what I wanted.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#12

Post by Timwi »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #6
pif wrote: post #4

Pie cannot be duplicated. Even if you're offering me a worse pie than I ate yesterday, either I enjoy yours or I have no pie. Software, on the other side, is duplicated on a whim. If you are not offering me new solutions that I need, I'm not even going to bother looking at it.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

> I’m genuinely confused by your comment.

I'm not, I get what they're saying. If I want to eat pie, I need to bake one first or find someone to bake it every time. If I want to use a software, I only need to write or find the software once; then I can keep using it indefinitely. Therefore, the common assumption is perfectly justified. Most people who write software do so to create something that isn't already available.

That said, I still agree with the post. Justified or not, the assumption is frequently wrong. Coding is fun for its own sake.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#13

Post by nkrisc »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #6
pif wrote: post #4

Pie cannot be duplicated. Even if you're offering me a worse pie than I ate yesterday, either I enjoy yours or I have no pie. Software, on the other side, is duplicated on a whim. If you are not offering me new solutions that I need, I'm not even going to bother looking at it.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

> I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe.

That’s just a different pie made with the same ingredients and recipe, it’s not the same pie I ate yesterday, it’s not a duplicate. I can never have that pie I ate yesterday again.

I can, however, make as many perfect duplicates of software as I want.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#14

Post by apeescape »

I mean, recreational programming and creating a side project for fun is nice and all, but a peach pie is something you can consume and is thus of interest to anyone who likes peach pies, whereas software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. Kudos to you for writing a generic TODO app, but why should anyone else be excited about it? I'm not sure why we even need to compare baking pies to writing software, it's apples to oranges.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#17

Post by manuelmoreale »

raddan wrote: post #11
manuelmoreale wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

It’s not that pie can’t be duplicated, it’s that there are real costs to the duplication. And making pies precisely the same is surprisingly hard (pie is my favorite treat and I make them all the time). Not so with software. Duplication and distribution are essentially free. Copies are perfect replicas. Why not then insist on the best version? Also, with food, the varied experience of slightly different pies is fun (…

Maybe I'm wrong—probably am—but isn't the article talking about something else? He's not talking about making a copy of a piece of software as a perfect replica. I think he's talking about coding something that is not conceptually different from something that was already existing.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#18

Post by jagged-chisel »

apeescape wrote: post #14

I mean, recreational programming and creating a side project for fun is nice and all, but a peach pie is something you can consume and is thus of interest to anyone who likes peach pies, whereas software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. Kudos to you for writing a generic TODO app, but why shoul…

I think it depends on the motivation of the creator. We, software engineers, don’t celebrate enough that someone is learning the craft.

“I made a thing!”

Hey, nice! Lots of us have made the thing, so if you want feedback or advice, just let us know!

That’s quite different from “I made a thing, and I think I can sell it.”

Hey, nice! Lots of us have made the thing so there’s many on the market. What differentiates yours?

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#19

Post by manuelmoreale »

Timwi wrote: post #12
manuelmoreale wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

> I’m genuinely confused by your comment. I'm not, I get what they're saying. If I want to eat pie, I need to bake one first or find someone to bake it every time . If I want to use a software, I only need to write or find the software once; then I can keep using it indefinitely. Therefore, the common assumption is perfectly justified. Most people who write software do so to create something that isn't already availa…

> Most people who write software do so to create something that isn't already available.

Well I guess we must work in a different environment because over my 13 years as a web dev I've seen people trying to reinvent the weel and coding the same thing over and over again. Just think at all infinite JS frameworks.

Are they technically identical? No. Was the problem "solved" already? Probably yes. Was it not solved the exact way the developer wanted? Also probably yes which is why they decided to code something new.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#20

Post by manuelmoreale »

nkrisc wrote: post #13
manuelmoreale wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. Same thing happens with software. You grab the same libraries and languages and build the same thing. I think I get what you’re trying to say when it comes to software but sometimes one might switch even if the new software doesn’t offer new solutions.

> I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe. That’s just a different pie made with the same ingredients and recipe, it’s not the same pie I ate yesterday, it’s not a duplicate. I can never have that pie I ate yesterday again. I can, however, make as many perfect duplicates of software as I want.

> I can, however, make as many perfect duplicates of software as I want.

Absolutely true but the point of the article is not about duplicating software. Is about developing something someone else already developed in a similar way even though the act of doing that doesn't produce something that's "original".

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