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ActivityPub isn't the future. Useful things that are built, brought to market, and meet user needs that may happen to use ActivityPub under the hood are the fu

by mfer 7y ago

ActivityPub isn't the future. Useful things that are built, brought to market, and meet user needs that may happen to use ActivityPub under the hood are the future. Knowing what is useful for whom and how to bring it to market in a sustainable manner for the people it's intended for is a super critical element. One that's often overlooked. Specs are like plumbing pipes. People care about sinks, showers, and stuff like that. The pipe fittings, materials, and sizes enable a lot. But, it's not what the end users tend to care about.

Frost1x 7y ago
I wish more developers understood this very basic concept instead of introducing layers of unnecessary complexities in the specs and plumbing that don't necessarily improve a sink or shower "for the better". If you're installing lots of sinks and showers, it's OK if you make the pipe fittings, materials, and plumbing a bit easier to work with. Coming up with dozen of all all new sets of pipe fittings, materials and plumbing designs every other week doesn't make installing sinks and showers easier. Imagine walking into Home Depot and discovering there are about 100 'standard' styles of sinks, faucets, fixtures, pipes, fittings, etc. all with varying degrees of support from none to complete for interoperability. Not only that, every other month, 10 of each of those pieces are no longer manufactured or supported and 20 complete new designs are created with all the same cavets as before. Meanwhile, you install these sinks daily and the customer really doesn't care at all about how elegant the back pieces are from a mathematical or structural view, they just want a functioning sink that they can assume is easy to fix or replace parts on when it breaks. Not only that, they want to be able to call any plumber and have that done without the plumber spending 2 weeks just figuring out what the hell the previous plumber did before they figure out just how to fix it. At which point they decide its easier to just rip everything out, set it on fire, and pick the latest sets of pipes and fittings for no necessarily justifiable reason than it will cost more in time and effort to deal with the previous sink install than to start from scratch.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > Imagine walking into Home Depot and discovering there are about 100 'standard' styles of sinks, faucets, fixtures, pipes, fittings, etc. all with varying degrees of support from none to complete for interoperability [severe emotional trauma flashbacks to previous contracts] I've seen some heroically constructed Gaudi-esque crystal cathedrals of systems and every one of them could have been replaced by a toolshed and done the same job.
- Shish2k 7y ago
  Just this Sunday I used an M5-sized drill bit from one manufacturer, in a drill from a second manufacturer, and the hole that I drilled was EXACTLY the right size for my M5-sized bolts from a third manufacturer. After recently spending three whole days trying to make one part of Kubernetes talk to another part of Kubernetes (and eventually giving up), that brought me so much joy that I’m wondering if I should give up on software and get into carpentry full-time...
kixiQu 7y ago
On the other hand, the metaphor's a little weird because... If there are EZ-use fittings that simplify certain use cases, I, a construction-minded person who doesn't usually engage in plumbing, may decide to create something I wouldn't have otherwise. Then that thing might get adoption because what I brought to the table was Super Cool And User-Relevant. The EZ-use fittings enabled that thing, even if they didn't define it. See: all the Big Things that started on shitty but accessible tech frameworks.

by mfer 7y ago

Frost1x 7y ago

I wish more developers understood this very basic concept instead of introducing layers of unnecessary complexities in the specs and plumbing that don't necessarily improve a sink or shower "for the better". If you're installing lots of sinks and showers, it's OK if you make the pipe fittings, materials, and plumbing a bit easier to work with. Coming up with dozen of all all new sets of pipe fittings, materials and plumbing designs every other week doesn't make installing sinks and showers easier. Imagine walking into Home Depot and discovering there are about 100 'standard' styles of sinks, faucets, fixtures, pipes, fittings, etc. all with varying degrees of support from none to complete for interoperability. Not only that, every other month, 10 of each of those pieces are no longer manufactured or supported and 20 complete new designs are created with all the same cavets as before. Meanwhile, you install these sinks daily and the customer really doesn't care at all about how elegant the back pieces are from a mathematical or structural view, they just want a functioning sink that they can assume is easy to fix or replace parts on when it breaks. Not only that, they want to be able to call any plumber and have that done without the plumber spending 2 weeks just figuring out what the hell the previous plumber did before they figure out just how to fix it. At which point they decide its easier to just rip everything out, set it on fire, and pick the latest sets of pipes and fittings for no necessarily justifiable reason than it will cost more in time and effort to deal with the previous sink install than to start from scratch.

zimpenfish 7y ago
> Imagine walking into Home Depot and discovering there are about 100 'standard' styles of sinks, faucets, fixtures, pipes, fittings, etc. all with varying degrees of support from none to complete for interoperability [severe emotional trauma flashbacks to previous contracts] I've seen some heroically constructed Gaudi-esque crystal cathedrals of systems and every one of them could have been replaced by a toolshed and done the same job.
Shish2k 7y ago
Just this Sunday I used an M5-sized drill bit from one manufacturer, in a drill from a second manufacturer, and the hole that I drilled was EXACTLY the right size for my M5-sized bolts from a third manufacturer. After recently spending three whole days trying to make one part of Kubernetes talk to another part of Kubernetes (and eventually giving up), that brought me so much joy that I’m wondering if I should give up on software and get into carpentry full-time...

kixiQu 7y ago

On the other hand, the metaphor's a little weird because... If there are EZ-use fittings that simplify certain use cases, I, a construction-minded person who doesn't usually engage in plumbing, may decide to create something I wouldn't have otherwise. Then that thing might get adoption because what I brought to the table was Super Cool And User-Relevant. The EZ-use fittings enabled that thing, even if they didn't define it. See: all the Big Things that started on shitty but accessible tech frameworks.