Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Software is narrative

infiniteundo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: Software is narrative

#31

Post by noshbrinken »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #28
adrianratnapala wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ajarmst's point goes beyond click-baitiness -- indeed it is about the little quote-box on the first para rather than the title. You say: "Any software system begins as a shared narrative about a problem and the people who come together around solving that problem." I can, in fact, bend my view of facts to fit this metaphor. And if am also dubious about doing so, that's OK as it makes it all the more likely that I wil…

Just to advocate for the devil here, I think some advice is predicated on a shared model, between the giver and the taker, of how things work. If you don’t buy the model, then you probably won’t deeply understand or agree with the arguments that would get you from the model to the thesis.

I definitely appreciated this early warning to get off the ride.

Re: Software is narrative

#33

Post by sebastianconcpt »

This is a good metanarrative for software authors. The more the product wants to be art, the more important this concept is. Humans are wired to spread stories so if a product doesn't communicate plenty of good ones, then there you have the anwer to why marketing budget isn't fixing the business.

Re: Software is narrative

#34

Post by ldng »

fragmede wrote: post #29
wickawic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think many people do a good job of logging when something goes wrong, and maybe they are good about logging inputs/outputs of a system, but I think that logging important decisions often falls off the table. Ideally I would like to take a request ID, grep the logs, and get an entire story of what happened to that request. In reality, this rarely happens!

> take a request ID, grep the logs, and get an entire story of what happened to that request. In reality, this rarely happens! If that's the situation you find yourself in, I cannot praise centralized logging with a good frontend highly enough because I frequently find myself trying to figure out what happened to a request, and it's like night and day. Needing to ssh anywhere and run grep against log files is functio…

True but even with a centralized logging system, if the logs are not good enough you can find yourself still wondering what the hell happened. Grep here is just the tool to extract the "story".

Re: Software is narrative

#35

Post by BaronSamedi »

ldng wrote: post #17

Just wondering if I'm the only one, but I like my logs to be the narrative of what's happening in the system.

Very good. I would add that I like my git commit messages to be narrative of the development process. Hmmm...I wonder if someone could write a science fiction short story using only git commit messages?

Re: Software is narrative

#36

Post by Textarcana »

noshbrinken wrote: post #31
evincarofautumn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to advocate for the devil here, I think some advice is predicated on a shared model, between the giver and the taker, of how things work. If you don’t buy the model, then you probably won’t deeply understand or agree with the arguments that would get you from the model to the thesis.

I definitely appreciated this early warning to get off the ride.

While I appreciate the spirit of what you are saying, the average time on page of 3 minutes 45 seconds (across 2k uniques) indicates most visitors are continuing past the paragraph you claim would be problematic.

Re: Software is narrative

#37

Post by Textarcana »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #28
adrianratnapala wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ajarmst's point goes beyond click-baitiness -- indeed it is about the little quote-box on the first para rather than the title. You say: "Any software system begins as a shared narrative about a problem and the people who come together around solving that problem." I can, in fact, bend my view of facts to fit this metaphor. And if am also dubious about doing so, that's OK as it makes it all the more likely that I wil…

Just to advocate for the devil here, I think some advice is predicated on a shared model, between the giver and the taker, of how things work. If you don’t buy the model, then you probably won’t deeply understand or agree with the arguments that would get you from the model to the thesis.

Yep. I spend a lot of time qualifying and hedging on these ideas in the work I do for software organizations. These blog posts are my opportunity to just lay my true opinions out for people and see what happens :)

Re: Software is narrative

#38

Post by Textarcana »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #27
Textarcana wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I write intentionally click-baity blog posts. You got me.

ajarmst's point goes beyond click-baitiness -- indeed it is about the little quote-box on the first para rather than the title. You say: "Any software system begins as a shared narrative about a problem and the people who come together around solving that problem." I can, in fact, bend my view of facts to fit this metaphor. And if am also dubious about doing so, that's OK as it makes it all the more likely that I wil…

The fact you thought about it enough to write 3 paragraphs about it shows the stickiness of my click-bait technique. You may not like my post but you will remember it.

Re: Software is narrative

#39

Post by Textarcana »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #35
ldng wrote: post #17

Just wondering if I'm the only one, but I like my logs to be the narrative of what's happening in the system.

Very good. I would add that I like my git commit messages to be narrative of the development process. Hmmm...I wonder if someone could write a science fiction short story using only git commit messages?

This is a good idea.

Re: Software is narrative

#40

Post by Textarcana »

mcbits wrote: post #26
anonymoushn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does [counterintuitive.][going_there] mean?

Based on the other usages in the article, it looks like some kind of link syntax like in markdown or wikitext, but it isn't being parsed/replaced. If so, then it just means "counterintuitive."

LOL I am the author and I didn't know what that comment meant when I saw it above!! Derp and I will go fix my broken links now :) Thanks for the heads up!
Post reply on HN