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I came across one of burntsushi's interactions on reddit that's still on my mind. A poster made an unfounded comment, based on their feelings, that a competing

by srik 7y ago

I came across one of burntsushi's interactions on reddit that's still on my mind. A poster made an unfounded comment, based on their feelings, that a competing tool was faster than ripgrep and when the author rightfully called them out on the improper metrics of said claim and even took the time to explain the unfortunate effects of such claims, they simply responded that they would now flat out drop ripgrep completely. I can only imagine how exasperating multiple interactions of that "drive-by low-effort nature" must make one feel. How does one even respond to comments like that! If you are reading this burntsushi, I'm really thankful for ripgrep, a tool I use tons of times almost everyday, as a backend for fzf etc. Definitely a happy user!

thrwaway69 7y ago
People are too quick to dismiss other's work when they don't know how hard it is or have done anything significant in the same field. Once dismissed, it becomes a matter of what they feel about it at face value. To everyone, it seems programmers write 500 words SEO spam posts so not worth much or hard. They can program the same if they wanted to. (Note - SEO spam posts here refers to subjecive low quality code, duplicate of existing solutions or very similar to what you can do by combining two existing tools.) Perception or feelings like above are quick to convey so they get conveyed. Spitting out code is not the hard part of open source imo. It's dedication, commitment, building a community and sustaining feedback. If I am writing software to solve trivial problem, then it wouldn't take me much time but if I am writing software to solve trivial problems for others, It would take me tremendous time to write insignificant piece of code because it needs to be documented, accessible, thoughtful, clean, hosted, testable, branded (naming is one of the hard problems, after all.) and pass through many such criteria. It doesn't need to but most people who love open source feel this way about their projects. It's hidden. It's not visible to someone who just created an issue. Somehow we live in meritocratic ideals but forget that meritocratic solution on their own don't get much attention. Without a good readme, a lot of people simply ignore the project. We are actively optmized to go through ton of information that it de-empathizes us to human touch or mistakes. It's quick to notice a typo and make an insignificant comment about it because you can't focus on everything. Anything unexpected is a distraction and we get easily distracted, thus sometime vent on meaningless things.
indemnity 7y ago
I’m sure almost everyone doing web uses ripgrep daily without realising it, by way of VS Code search or Atom Search. I’ve aliased grep to it so that I never have to suffer through slow searches if I type grep out of muscle memory. Love reading his code too.
- quindecagon 7y ago
  Retrain your muscle memory. grep () { echo "Use rg" rg "$@" }
Aeolun 7y ago
> How does one even respond to comments like that! I think a large part of it is (at least for me) the inability to believe that you cannot eventually make them see the light. Sometimes that actually happens. Mostly it doesn’t.
AlephGarden 7y ago
> How does one even respond to comments like that! Something I struggle with on other internet forums, too. I try to tell myself that I'm not just writing to change the low-effort antagonist's mind, but for everyone else reading the thread, too.

by srik 7y ago

thrwaway69 7y ago

People are too quick to dismiss other's work when they don't know how hard it is or have done anything significant in the same field. Once dismissed, it becomes a matter of what they feel about it at face value. To everyone, it seems programmers write 500 words SEO spam posts so not worth much or hard. They can program the same if they wanted to. (Note - SEO spam posts here refers to subjecive low quality code, duplicate of existing solutions or very similar to what you can do by combining two existing tools.) Perception or feelings like above are quick to convey so they get conveyed. Spitting out code is not the hard part of open source imo. It's dedication, commitment, building a community and sustaining feedback. If I am writing software to solve trivial problem, then it wouldn't take me much time but if I am writing software to solve trivial problems for others, It would take me tremendous time to write insignificant piece of code because it needs to be documented, accessible, thoughtful, clean, hosted, testable, branded (naming is one of the hard problems, after all.) and pass through many such criteria. It doesn't need to but most people who love open source feel this way about their projects. It's hidden. It's not visible to someone who just created an issue. Somehow we live in meritocratic ideals but forget that meritocratic solution on their own don't get much attention. Without a good readme, a lot of people simply ignore the project. We are actively optmized to go through ton of information that it de-empathizes us to human touch or mistakes. It's quick to notice a typo and make an insignificant comment about it because you can't focus on everything. Anything unexpected is a distraction and we get easily distracted, thus sometime vent on meaningless things.

indemnity 7y ago

I’m sure almost everyone doing web uses ripgrep daily without realising it, by way of VS Code search or Atom Search. I’ve aliased grep to it so that I never have to suffer through slow searches if I type grep out of muscle memory. Love reading his code too.

quindecagon 7y ago
Retrain your muscle memory. grep () { echo "Use rg" rg "$@" }

Aeolun 7y ago

> How does one even respond to comments like that! I think a large part of it is (at least for me) the inability to believe that you cannot eventually make them see the light. Sometimes that actually happens. Mostly it doesn’t.

AlephGarden 7y ago

> How does one even respond to comments like that! Something I struggle with on other internet forums, too. I try to tell myself that I'm not just writing to change the low-effort antagonist's mind, but for everyone else reading the thread, too.