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Most of the time is just wasted effort. Yes, more ideas features, use cases, but I usually prefer one thing which is very high quality instead of a lot of small

Most of the time is just wasted effort. Yes, more ideas features, use cases, but I usually prefer one thing which is very high quality instead of a lot of small things which are never complete.

always_good 9y ago
But you're making the wrong assumption that effort is fungible. That if something new didn't exist, that the effort would have instead happened on the old thing. I don't understand why people think this way since those same people certainly don't operate that way. It's just backseat driving how other people spend their free time. Just comes off as a circlejerk.
- sundarurfriend 9y ago
  > backseat driving how other people spend their free time I like that phrase a lot, captures a lot about comments on OSS projects here in HN and elsewhere.
zanny 9y ago
Its free software, and I can definitely relate to Keats that there are a lot of software projects I'd look at and think about participating in and just concede I don't want to work in my free time in whatever language its written in. Go is definitely one of those languages. My most definitions I have not given it the proper chance, but the lack of generics just turns me off as an avid user of C++ and Rust, in the same way Java has always turned me off for lacking functional features other languages have had for decades. For example, I've often thought about contributing webrtc peer support to various torrent libraries, but when I dig into them (libtorrent, libtransmission, libktorrent, etc) they are all 15+ years old codebases of either C99 or pre-C++03 C++. Considering I'm coming from Rust in my free time I know I would just drop the project within a week because of frustrations with the tooling and language. If I ever really wanted to go the extra mile, I'd use it as a learning experience for some of the Rust GUI bindings and write my own torrent library. Reinventing the wheel yes, but I'd rather spend right now a thousand hours in Rust than a hundred in a really old C code base. I imagine many of these developers like Keats feel the same way.
saghm 9y ago
Just because you prefer other things doesn't mean it's wasted effort. Even if no one else used it (which isn't the case here), there's nothing wrong with working on a side project just to build your skills.
- Walkman 9y ago
  that's totally different. You can do whatever you want in your free time as a hobby, or whatever reason, but I mean if it's not just for joy, and anything, and you want to solve a real problem, it would be better for everybody if you would just join to an already existing community and improve the thing already exists. So basically I don't find it a valid reason to make an entirely new thing because the existing solutions did not worked the way you wanted.
  - Keats 9y ago
    The issue with that reasoning is that according to you, everyone should just work on the first popular tool and never create a new one. People like different things and cramming all opinions into one thing, if even possible, usually don't work out. I mentioned it in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511028) but none of the things I wanted to change in Hugo could have been done.

Most of the time is just wasted effort. Yes, more ideas features, use cases, but I usually prefer one thing which is very high quality instead of a lot of small things which are never complete.

always_good 9y ago

But you're making the wrong assumption that effort is fungible. That if something new didn't exist, that the effort would have instead happened on the old thing. I don't understand why people think this way since those same people certainly don't operate that way. It's just backseat driving how other people spend their free time. Just comes off as a circlejerk.

sundarurfriend 9y ago
> backseat driving how other people spend their free time I like that phrase a lot, captures a lot about comments on OSS projects here in HN and elsewhere.

zanny 9y ago

Its free software, and I can definitely relate to Keats that there are a lot of software projects I'd look at and think about participating in and just concede I don't want to work in my free time in whatever language its written in. Go is definitely one of those languages. My most definitions I have not given it the proper chance, but the lack of generics just turns me off as an avid user of C++ and Rust, in the same way Java has always turned me off for lacking functional features other languages have had for decades. For example, I've often thought about contributing webrtc peer support to various torrent libraries, but when I dig into them (libtorrent, libtransmission, libktorrent, etc) they are all 15+ years old codebases of either C99 or pre-C++03 C++. Considering I'm coming from Rust in my free time I know I would just drop the project within a week because of frustrations with the tooling and language. If I ever really wanted to go the extra mile, I'd use it as a learning experience for some of the Rust GUI bindings and write my own torrent library. Reinventing the wheel yes, but I'd rather spend right now a thousand hours in Rust than a hundred in a really old C code base. I imagine many of these developers like Keats feel the same way.

saghm 9y ago

Just because you prefer other things doesn't mean it's wasted effort. Even if no one else used it (which isn't the case here), there's nothing wrong with working on a side project just to build your skills.

Walkman 9y ago
that's totally different. You can do whatever you want in your free time as a hobby, or whatever reason, but I mean if it's not just for joy, and anything, and you want to solve a real problem, it would be better for everybody if you would just join to an already existing community and improve the thing already exists. So basically I don't find it a valid reason to make an entirely new thing because the existing solutions did not worked the way you wanted.
- Keats 9y ago
  The issue with that reasoning is that according to you, everyone should just work on the first popular tool and never create a new one. People like different things and cramming all opinions into one thing, if even possible, usually don't work out. I mentioned it in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15511028) but none of the things I wanted to change in Hugo could have been done.