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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

#51

Post by matheusmoreira »

mirashii wrote: post #42
mghackerlady wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very much for people open-sourcing their projects in terms of releasing the source code. Just don't accept patches or whatever, keep the repos closed

Unfortunately, and I think to great overall harm, GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration features. I was just having a discussion today with someone who would be fine open sourcing their code, but is uninterested in any contributions, questions, or community interaction. Since GitHub won’t allow that, their options are to host it somewhere themselves where nobody will see it, or just don’t publish…

> GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration

I wish they'd allow making issues and pull requests sponsor only. Could enable a business model.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#52

Post by mmooss »

> 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 from an extreme outlier: much of the time, others aren't interested, or not many are. Sometimes, nobody is interested until after you've forgotten about it or passed away. Who cares? That's one reason you need to make it for yourself. Also, I think that otherwise it provides much less expression and insight into another person, which is at the core of art. There is a fundamental human need to 'externalize the imagination'.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#54

Post by mmooss »

jesse__ wrote: post #39

> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream This is a habit I picked up from two people I respect greatly as programmers; Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow. Those guys both built their own little lands; Jon went as far as building a new language, a 3D game engine in that language, and has multiple game titles in-flight in the engine. I have a handful of projects that are simila…

> 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.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#55

Post by cons0le »

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…

Watches are a horrible example. The rich buy them because they're a status symbol. Rich people aren't going to start retaining teams of software experts just for status.

"Mechanical watches" also aren't exploding at all. When people cite this, they're citing the overall watch market growing, because the market for million dollar watches is being driven by a very small group of collectors. Its also not sustainable, and will die down in ~10-20 years when these old guys finish dying. The average not rich person could not give less of a damn about mechanical watches. There's no great comeback on the horizon

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#56

Post by jamesgill »

I agree with the title, but disagree with this:

"When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software."

The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done. That's it. The software is always in service to the job the user wants to get done. Can that make them go 'wow'? Sure, but you can't..aim for 'wow'. That's the wrong goal.

As far as 'inspiration' goes, I'm with Stephen King: "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

For those that might disagree (hey, it's HN), I would ask: how do you know when 'wow' occurs? Here's a clue: 'wow' can only happen when something else occurs first. That 'something else' is described above.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#57

Post by robin_reala »

jamesgill wrote: post #56

I agree with the title, but disagree with this: "When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software." The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done . That's it. The software is always in service to…

That’s overly reductive. You’re making a CRUD app? Absolutely. You’re programming a new effect for a laser setup in a club? Less so.

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#59

Post by bandofthehawk »

robin_reala wrote: post #57
jamesgill wrote: post #56

I agree with the title, but disagree with this: "When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software." The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done . That's it. The software is always in service to…

That’s overly reductive. You’re making a CRUD app? Absolutely. You’re programming a new effect for a laser setup in a club? Less so.

Even in the case of a CRUD app, I think it's not bad to aim for a wow. Like "with this new feature, I'll no longer need to do x, y, and z repetitive tasks, great!"

Re: Craft software that makes people feel something

#60

Post by munificent »

mirashii wrote: post #42
mghackerlady wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very much for people open-sourcing their projects in terms of releasing the source code. Just don't accept patches or whatever, keep the repos closed

Unfortunately, and I think to great overall harm, GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration features. I was just having a discussion today with someone who would be fine open sourcing their code, but is uninterested in any contributions, questions, or community interaction. Since GitHub won’t allow that, their options are to host it somewhere themselves where nobody will see it, or just don’t publish…

I have a hobby game up on GitHub. The README explains that it's open source for people to fork it and file issues, but that I don't accept contributions. So far, it seems like that's been very effective.

We don't always have to solve problems with technology. Sometimes you can just tell people things.

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