4 ms·

I'd like to post a purely positive, encouraging comment here :-) Thanks for the article, and good job implementing an entire editor from scratch in C! That's i

by zellyn 9y ago

I'd like to post a purely positive, encouraging comment here :-) Thanks for the article, and good job implementing an entire editor from scratch in C! That's impressive. Also, as a very accomplished programmer who happens not to have done much recent UI programming, who has read quite a bit about React/Redux/Rewhatever, Elm, The Haskell School of Expression, etc., I find articles like this extremely helpful: you took a simple example, and clearly and straightforwardly demonstrated the underlying goals and principles of "Unidirectional UI". While I mostly "get it" already from reading articles on React-based architectures, clear reiterations of the idea are a huge aid in getting the concepts solid.

fnl 9y ago
Thank you, for this! I could not say it better/nicer. I was getting upset with the overwhelming negativity here. Monday morning syndrome?
- mcjiggerlog 9y ago
  Unfortunately HN can be unnecessarily negative sometimes. Thanks for the interesting article!
  - fnl 9y ago
    Sorry, don't get me wrong - I'm not the author; I just wanted to know why HN had voted this article to #1, and then was even more confused by the tone in the comments. Hopefully, the productive comments will end up on top, eventually!
- olddevanon 9y ago
  It's because the challenge he set himself isn't hard and he didn't do a particularly good job of it either (other comments have covered that so I wont reiterate it) yet he is soapboxing his experiences as if the topic isn't entry-level stuff. And I mean "entry-level" quite literally as you learn about event-driven programming in high school or equivalent IT classes. This isn't something you need a CS degree to learn. I mean kudos to the guy for trying something new but honestly I'd expect anyone working as a developer in IT to have learned this much before calling themselves a professional. And that includes Javascript devs since so much of frontend development is event-driven anyway. Personally I get a little fed up by just how _bad_ many frontend developers seem to be these days. I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush as I'm known some really amazing frontend devs too (though they ususally consider themselves full stack). But I've lost count of the number of Javascript developers who I've had to explain HTTP status codes and the difference between GET and POST. It feels like frontend development is a place where people go if they like the idea of coding but can't be bothered to learn how to actually programme nor any of the principles they're building their code on top of. Thankfully the topic author bucks that trend a little but even in his case the lessons he is learning are painfully basic. By the way it's a bank holiday (long weekend) in the UK so no Mondays blues from me. :D
  - fnl 9y ago
    LOL! :-) As I said elsewhere, I think this is clearly an article for a junior audience. But I think he did an good enough job at explaining his main concepts to his peers/readers. In fact, the whole "I coded an editor in C" is at best a irrelevant eye-catcher, as you can copy-paste about a gazillion implementations from anywhere. So because of that, any seasoned dev should probably not fall for such a "catchy" header in the first place... :-) http://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/ http://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/ http://www.cprogramming.com/texteditors.html http://www.cprogramming.com/texteditors.html http://jwu.50webs.com/Archive/src/simted3/simted3.pdf http://jwu.50webs.com/Archive/src/simted3/simted3.pdf ... [ad nauseam]
  - jasode 9y ago
    >I'd expect anyone working as a developer in IT to have learned this much before calling themselves a professional. According to author's webpage[1], he's a "student at the University of Waterloo, class of 2021". So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional". If majority of HN readers feel this article was beneath their skill level and a waste of time, that's more on the submitter (mxstbr) for misjudging its value to the HN audience rather than the article's author. (Although at this time, the article does have 110 upvotes while simultaneously, the top-voted comment (poster mmjaa) is critical about its simplistic banality. So maybe the submitter got the pulse correct for half of the HN split-personality?) [1] http://lpan.io/ http://lpan.io/
    - olddevanon 9y ago
      > According to author's webpage[1], he's a "student at the University of Waterloo, class of 2021". > So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional". Fair enough, though I am still surprised he hadn't learned that in formal education already. I was taught about event driven programming before I got to university. The schools I went to weren't particularly good either so it's not like I had a "better" education or come from privilege. Maybe they just don't teach event-driven programming any more? :(
      - 9y ago
- jdc0589 9y ago
  No, its every day syndrome around here for this type of thing, I've seen it frequently. A lot of people on HN are not receptive to someone posting a blog entry about their experiences re-implementing something for learning purposes if it isn't super advanced stuff. I don't really get it, but there are a lot of people who can't read a technical blog post from the perspective of someone with less experience than them trying to learn new stuff. So, you get a lot of the comments about how what you did is dumb and wrong, even though you are really just trying to build something for fun, learn some stuff, and post about your experience. For the record, I enjoy posts like this. This is how you learn and hone new skills. Everyone does this kind of thing (well, lots of people do), but for whatever reason those that write it up get attacked sometimes.
  - bostonpete 9y ago
    Might be a bit of selection bias too. The people who had a neutral-positive reaction may not feel like they have much to add beyond "thanks" or "nice job", which sometimes feel like platitudes.
  - simonh 9y ago
    >I don't really get it, but there are a lot of people who can't read a technical blog post from the perspective of someone with less experience than them trying to learn new stuff. I strongly suspect a lot of posters of negative comments really aren't any more capable, but are just showing off by picking holes in other people's work. No advanced project like this gets done perfectly first time. Anyone who's worked on a complex project, especially on their own, would know and appreciate that.
mivanchev 9y ago
Very much this! As a person who recently completed a medium-sized C project I can say the author's work is simply IMPRESSIVE on so many levels. It's true that there's no error checking and there's undefined behavior, but please note that the author is rather young and this project is in a usable state. All of these issues can be added/fixed with time as the author learns more about the language and programming in general. The author got good experience and this is what counts here. Clearly, the author is willing to get some practical coding experience next to the theoretical foundations he learns about at the university. I can only support that and sadly I didn't have this mindset while studying CS. The way I see it, the author had an idea, sat down, put it to practice and implemented a functional prototype which can easily be expanded upon. This is probably how all these arcane *nix tools we use today came into existence. I don't imagine anyone wondering "should I use a rope or something more efficient, let me just spend 2 months trying out different structures" while coding one of the first text editors. Also, what the author did would not be simple to achieve in ANY language, because no language out there has a ProduceVimLikeEditorWithMinimalFeatures() function.

by zellyn 9y ago

fnl 9y ago

Thank you, for this! I could not say it better/nicer. I was getting upset with the overwhelming negativity here. Monday morning syndrome?

mcjiggerlog 9y ago
Unfortunately HN can be unnecessarily negative sometimes. Thanks for the interesting article!
- fnl 9y ago
  Sorry, don't get me wrong - I'm not the author; I just wanted to know why HN had voted this article to #1, and then was even more confused by the tone in the comments. Hopefully, the productive comments will end up on top, eventually!
olddevanon 9y ago
It's because the challenge he set himself isn't hard and he didn't do a particularly good job of it either (other comments have covered that so I wont reiterate it) yet he is soapboxing his experiences as if the topic isn't entry-level stuff. And I mean "entry-level" quite literally as you learn about event-driven programming in high school or equivalent IT classes. This isn't something you need a CS degree to learn. I mean kudos to the guy for trying something new but honestly I'd expect anyone working as a developer in IT to have learned this much before calling themselves a professional. And that includes Javascript devs since so much of frontend development is event-driven anyway. Personally I get a little fed up by just how _bad_ many frontend developers seem to be these days. I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush as I'm known some really amazing frontend devs too (though they ususally consider themselves full stack). But I've lost count of the number of Javascript developers who I've had to explain HTTP status codes and the difference between GET and POST. It feels like frontend development is a place where people go if they like the idea of coding but can't be bothered to learn how to actually programme nor any of the principles they're building their code on top of. Thankfully the topic author bucks that trend a little but even in his case the lessons he is learning are painfully basic. By the way it's a bank holiday (long weekend) in the UK so no Mondays blues from me. :D
- fnl 9y ago
  LOL! :-) As I said elsewhere, I think this is clearly an article for a junior audience. But I think he did an good enough job at explaining his main concepts to his peers/readers. In fact, the whole "I coded an editor in C" is at best a irrelevant eye-catcher, as you can copy-paste about a gazillion implementations from anywhere. So because of that, any seasoned dev should probably not fall for such a "catchy" header in the first place... :-) http://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/ http://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/ http://www.cprogramming.com/texteditors.html http://www.cprogramming.com/texteditors.html http://jwu.50webs.com/Archive/src/simted3/simted3.pdf http://jwu.50webs.com/Archive/src/simted3/simted3.pdf ... [ad nauseam]
- jasode 9y ago
  >I'd expect anyone working as a developer in IT to have learned this much before calling themselves a professional. According to author's webpage[1], he's a "student at the University of Waterloo, class of 2021". So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional". If majority of HN readers feel this article was beneath their skill level and a waste of time, that's more on the submitter (mxstbr) for misjudging its value to the HN audience rather than the article's author. (Although at this time, the article does have 110 upvotes while simultaneously, the top-voted comment (poster mmjaa) is critical about its simplistic banality. So maybe the submitter got the pulse correct for half of the HN split-personality?) [1] http://lpan.io/ http://lpan.io/
  - olddevanon 9y ago
    > According to author's webpage[1], he's a "student at the University of Waterloo, class of 2021". > So probably age 17 or 18. He's not passing himself off as a "professional". Fair enough, though I am still surprised he hadn't learned that in formal education already. I was taught about event driven programming before I got to university. The schools I went to weren't particularly good either so it's not like I had a "better" education or come from privilege. Maybe they just don't teach event-driven programming any more? :(
    - 9y ago
jdc0589 9y ago
No, its every day syndrome around here for this type of thing, I've seen it frequently. A lot of people on HN are not receptive to someone posting a blog entry about their experiences re-implementing something for learning purposes if it isn't super advanced stuff. I don't really get it, but there are a lot of people who can't read a technical blog post from the perspective of someone with less experience than them trying to learn new stuff. So, you get a lot of the comments about how what you did is dumb and wrong, even though you are really just trying to build something for fun, learn some stuff, and post about your experience. For the record, I enjoy posts like this. This is how you learn and hone new skills. Everyone does this kind of thing (well, lots of people do), but for whatever reason those that write it up get attacked sometimes.
- bostonpete 9y ago
  Might be a bit of selection bias too. The people who had a neutral-positive reaction may not feel like they have much to add beyond "thanks" or "nice job", which sometimes feel like platitudes.
- simonh 9y ago
  >I don't really get it, but there are a lot of people who can't read a technical blog post from the perspective of someone with less experience than them trying to learn new stuff. I strongly suspect a lot of posters of negative comments really aren't any more capable, but are just showing off by picking holes in other people's work. No advanced project like this gets done perfectly first time. Anyone who's worked on a complex project, especially on their own, would know and appreciate that.

mivanchev 9y ago

Very much this! As a person who recently completed a medium-sized C project I can say the author's work is simply IMPRESSIVE on so many levels. It's true that there's no error checking and there's undefined behavior, but please note that the author is rather young and this project is in a usable state. All of these issues can be added/fixed with time as the author learns more about the language and programming in general. The author got good experience and this is what counts here. Clearly, the author is willing to get some practical coding experience next to the theoretical foundations he learns about at the university. I can only support that and sadly I didn't have this mindset while studying CS. The way I see it, the author had an idea, sat down, put it to practice and implemented a functional prototype which can easily be expanded upon. This is probably how all these arcane *nix tools we use today came into existence. I don't imagine anyone wondering "should I use a rope or something more efficient, let me just spend 2 months trying out different structures" while coding one of the first text editors. Also, what the author did would not be simple to achieve in ANY language, because no language out there has a ProduceVimLikeEditorWithMinimalFeatures() function.