Levels of aspiration • Hacker News Board

Re: Levels of aspiration

#41

Post by paulsutter » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 10:19 PM UTC

joshuacc wrote: post #39

paulsutter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changes the context of his smugness? Yeah as in erasing all doubt that the author is not merely smug but full on delusional. Elon Musk is moving industries forward. The first time I used an iPhone it was so beautiful I could cry. But, Rails? I mean, not to harsh on Rails at all, it's a great tool. Moving an industry forward whenever you use Rails? WTF?

I highly doubt he's talking about moving industries forward by using Rails. More likely he means moving industries forward by creating and continuing development of Rails. Say what you want about it now, Rails had a huge impact on the web development industry when it first came out.

Thanks for the correction, doesn't change my reaction.

Languages are great, but its hard to tell If the proliferation of so many languages moves the industry forward or backward. Wasn't the whole point of the tower of babel story that god created so many languages to slow down progress?

Re: Levels of aspiration

#42

Post by losethos » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

titanic or kayak?

Re: Levels of aspiration

#43

Post by Lockyy » Wed, Jul 11, 2012, 12:01 AM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #13

smacktoward wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I get a lot less out of essays I read if I get sidetracked into making value judgments about the authors Similarly, I find I get a lot less out of essays when it seems that the authors are making value judgments about me.

Again you inject the authors into the discussion. Why don’t we pretend I have this warehouse full of monkeys tapping on typewriters. We walk by one of the monkeys and look at what it has written. Hmm, seems interesting. It could be all wrong, it could be useful. Why can’t we just just examine the words on the paper for what they are and see if they're useful to think about? If you’d rather not, you go your way and I…

Because sometimes authors have ulterior motives that you have to watch out for.

I'm not saying this article does have ulterior motives, just that acting as if every article has no author and hence no motive behind its writing is naive.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#44

Post by pgrote » Wed, Jul 11, 2012, 1:15 AM UTC

dhh wrote: post #36

pgrote wrote: post #35

Why is Wordpress on the base level?

I used it as an example of what people who just modify an existing code base would use. Not Wordpress, the product, itself. I'm sure that's nicely done.

Thank you for the clarification.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#45

Post by ken » Wed, Jul 11, 2012, 5:52 AM UTC

Udo wrote: post #4

To help someone move up the hierarchies, they have to have an intrisic (sic) desire to do so. Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tell signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate. For an article that claims we need software "in all shapes and sizes" the amount of smug superiority exhibited here is amazing. Yes,…

Scott McCloud's book "Understanding Comics" outlines a path of 6 steps for artists. He proposes that the greats all master the same first 4 steps, but then split on which of the final two is their primary tool.

The "pioneers and revolutionaries" play with the form itself (Moebius, Picasso, Stravinsky). The "storytellers" use the medium for their ideas (Schultz, Dickens, Capra). Neither approach is superior to the other, and the line between them is certainly fuzzy.

The original Macintosh operating system, for example, was probably pretty lousy code by any modern standard, but certainly moved the industry forward. TeX, on the other hand, is arguably excellent code, and still used today, but probably never had as many users. Which is "better"? Neither, of course! In McCloud's terms, Apple focused on "form", and Knuth focused on "idea".