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Craft software that makes people feel something

rapha.land

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Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#101

Post by hgs3 »

pedrozieg wrote: post #15

There’s something refreshing about explicitly saying “this editor exists to delight me, and that’s enough”. The default script now is that every side project should either be open-sourced or turned into a SaaS, even if that pressure is exactly what kills the weirdness that made it interesting in the first place. Some of the best tools I’ve used felt like they started as someone’s private playground that only later go…

> The default script now is that every side project should either be open-sourced or turned into a SaaS

I think its worse then that. It seems the narrative is everything needs to be enterprise-scale by default. Those who value small languages and tools, experimentation, self-hosting, and the do-it-yourself mindset are the counterculture.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#102

Post by mmooss »

jesse__ wrote: post #41
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #17

Kinda tangential but in the advent of AI I feel like there won’t be a niche for “handcrafted software”. When quartz watches came up the makers of mechanical watches struggled. Quartz watches are cheaper, more accurate in many cases and servicing is usually restricted to replacing a battery. However some people appreciate a good mechanical watch (and the status symbol aspect of course) and nowadays the mechanical watc…

This is a bad analogy. > more accurate in many cases It's laughable that LLMs can be considered more accurate than human operators at the macro level. Sure, if I ask a search bot the date Notre Dame was built, it'll get it right more often than me, but if I ask it to write even a simple heap memory allocator, it's going to vomit all over itself. > Nobody [...] will ever care if the software was written by people or a…

> if I ask a search bot the date Notre Dame was built, it'll get it right more often than me

With both of you doing research in your own ways, you'll get it right more often (I hope).

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#103

Post by mmooss »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92
mmooss wrote: post #52

> 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…

> or passed away A certain one-eared Dutchman comes to mind...

Somewhere online I saw photos of where The Dutchman lived while creating some of the paintings - dirty, dreary, lifeless, depresssing places. To see that all around and to imagine and create the mini-worlds in those painting - with their vivid, wild use of color and texture - is wondrous and wonderful.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#104

Post by mmooss »

nospice wrote: post #67
mmooss wrote: post #52

> 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…

> This is how many artists have worked. They make something for themself, and one day they show it to someone else 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 n…

There are plenty of impovrished, struggling artists - it's a cliche - and especially unknown ones creating for themselves.

> Everyone else needed to find menial jobs.

That doesn't mean you can't create art. Anthony Trollope worked for the post office. Einstein, who externalized imagination in somewhat different way and attributed much to art, was a patent clerk. New York and LA are filled with waitstaff-artists. A friend hired a moving company that almost exclusively hired artists as movers (I know - they weren't too skinny?).

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#105

Post by mmooss »

jesse__ wrote: post #63
mmooss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Hah, I should have been more specific. They created programming environments that are entirely their own. Although Jon has created several games which include fictional geographic worlds.

Still, it seems like the same thing to me, just in a different medium. Though the public has a much easier time understanding maps than programming environments.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#106

Post by matheusmoreira »

tacone wrote: post #98
matheusmoreira wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's precisely because of the hobby nature of my projects that I want this feature. Support and collaboration are a lot of work. I have trouble conjuring up enough motivation to work on my projects as it is.

I found working with AI as the code buddy to be motivating (ironically). You get to chat about the project, ask opinions and in general have somebody do the work you don't find inspiring. AI often doesn't do things your way, but if your doing something for yourself you usually care more about the goal than the technicalities. Also AI working on a hobby code base is less prone to overcomplication since it basically co…

I had a similar experience. Just chatting about stuff, shooting ideas and concepts back and forth with the AI is quite stimulating. I get to be an obnoxious help vampire without draining other humans of their patience and motivation. It's like having a developer friend with infinite patience to chat with.

In terms of productivity it's having something of a mixed effect. It gives me very clear ideas and direction but at the same time everything just feels done afterwards. All that's left is actually executing the tasks which is... Boring.

I'm not sure I trust ChatGPT to do it for me like an agent. The examples it gives me are never quite right. It's probably a lot better at generating frontend javascript code than programming language interpreter code.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#107

Post by Yokohiii »

9rx wrote: post #90
Yokohiii wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused on your use of "duplicating". I think straight duplication is quite unlikely. You even say it's inevitable. Which is also confusing. Most code written is probably quite unremarkable, yet useful. Usefulness is a dominating factor, wow has a lot of depends.

> I think straight duplication is quite unlikely. Is it? There are many different people selling wheels that are all pretty much indistinguishable from one another. The first one no doubt brought the 'wow'. But when the second person showed up with the same thing, what 'wow' would there be? Our entire system of trade assumes that duplication occurs as an intrinsic piece, with the only defining difference in that dupl…

I am stuck with your phrasing. Duplication is for me something like cloning or a perfect copy. Which I think is unusual. You will find a chinese phone that looks like an iPhone but is totally different and magnitudes cheaper. What you talk about is probably more like mimicking. Offering something that people are used to to get into the market. But every competitor will eventually look for things to make a brand or product different. What is inevitable, is to diverge from mimicry. So duplicating is an evolutionary process itself.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#108

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

mmooss wrote: post #103
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or passed away A certain one-eared Dutchman comes to mind...

Somewhere online I saw photos of where The Dutchman lived while creating some of the paintings - dirty, dreary, lifeless, depresssing places. To see that all around and to imagine and create the mini-worlds in those painting - with their vivid, wild use of color and texture - is wondrous and wonderful.

I think he sort of lived in his own world. He was def pretty neurodivergent, in some way.

I [sort of] remember a movie, once, that had a kid basically doing a "Don Quixote" on the world, where his vision of everything was kind of wondrous.

Don't remember it well enough to recall its name, though...

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#110

Post by mrec »

nospice wrote: post #82
eikenberry wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That model depended on personal wealth or (more often) patronage. "They make something for themself, .." For the vast majority of people this means doing it on the side, in addition to their day-job. I've known a lot of artists in my time and we all have day jobs. You do art for yourself because you love to create, not expecting to make any significant money on it.

Right, which works great if your daytime job is being a professor at Oxford, but maybe less so if your only opportunity is farm labor or other physically exhausting job. Today, more people have the opportunity to dabble in art than ever before.

Personally I've found it much easier to sustain creative stuff on the side while doing a non-knowledge-based job than a knowledge-based one. Mental exhaustion is much more of a drag than physical. (Though the knowledge-based hours were longer too, which I'm sure was a factor.)
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