3 ms·

> Here's my modest plea to authors of extensions like this Not trying to be snarky or anything but... the source code is available. If there's something that y

> Here's my modest plea to authors of extensions like this Not trying to be snarky or anything but... the source code is available. If there's something that you really need, please consider contributing. That goes for any open-source project.

Gehinnn 6y ago
But they have a valid point that many things could be more useful if they were thought more general. I feel like software development could be significantly more efficient if all developers would work together and not against each other, or just with much more foresight. We have so many programs/code/libraries that do almost the same stuff. But then, we are already super efficient compared to what we could do 50 years ago.
cxr 6y ago
For what it's worth, I wasn't going to respond, but the more I read back this reply, the more it chafes—maybe because I've bristled about similar replies in the past and I've tried many times to write a blog post about what I see happening here. It reminds me of a different but commonplace phenomenon that has led to the case where I no longer bother filing bugs against projects who host their bugtracker on GitHub because of the high-ish likelihood that it will get a reply in the form of a comment responding solely to an imagined subtext in my message—where the subtext is that my bug report is actually a support request. I attribute this to the bugtrackers in many projects being run so poorly that folks are even allowed to file support requests there (which is frustratingly common on GitHub) and that maybe because the reply originates from someone who lives in a world where all communication happens through subtext. So intentional snarkiness or not, there's something in your comment that just doesn't comport with mine and the message in it. If I were directly addressing the author of this tool and, say, asking that it be changed or repackaged to solve some problem for me, then your reply would be on-target. But I'm not even using this extension, and that's not what my comment was. It was not a support request. Besides what I wrote, there was no subtext to be found, but if a person insisted on trying to root out some latent meaning from the words, then let it have been an observation about current approaches to modularity or the principle of least authority or the principle of least power. https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html
- outworlder 6y ago
  [Edited - point taken ] I apologize for having jumped the gun here. I guess your reply was appropriate for a 'Show HN' thread, since these threads are feedback requests.

Gehinnn 6y ago

But they have a valid point that many things could be more useful if they were thought more general. I feel like software development could be significantly more efficient if all developers would work together and not against each other, or just with much more foresight. We have so many programs/code/libraries that do almost the same stuff. But then, we are already super efficient compared to what we could do 50 years ago.

cxr 6y ago

For what it's worth, I wasn't going to respond, but the more I read back this reply, the more it chafes—maybe because I've bristled about similar replies in the past and I've tried many times to write a blog post about what I see happening here. It reminds me of a different but commonplace phenomenon that has led to the case where I no longer bother filing bugs against projects who host their bugtracker on GitHub because of the high-ish likelihood that it will get a reply in the form of a comment responding solely to an imagined subtext in my message—where the subtext is that my bug report is actually a support request. I attribute this to the bugtrackers in many projects being run so poorly that folks are even allowed to file support requests there (which is frustratingly common on GitHub) and that maybe because the reply originates from someone who lives in a world where all communication happens through subtext. So intentional snarkiness or not, there's something in your comment that just doesn't comport with mine and the message in it. If I were directly addressing the author of this tool and, say, asking that it be changed or repackaged to solve some problem for me, then your reply would be on-target. But I'm not even using this extension, and that's not what my comment was. It was not a support request. Besides what I wrote, there was no subtext to be found, but if a person insisted on trying to root out some latent meaning from the words, then let it have been an observation about current approaches to modularity or the principle of least authority or the principle of least power. https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html

outworlder 6y ago
[Edited - point taken ] I apologize for having jumped the gun here. I guess your reply was appropriate for a 'Show HN' thread, since these threads are feedback requests.