21 ms·

I dunno, there's a lot of really high quality stable software out there. It's not all crap. But as someone who has had the luxury of taking time to do things

by lisper 6y ago

I dunno, there's a lot of really high quality stable software out there. It's not all crap. But as someone who has had the luxury of taking time to do things the Right Way let me tell you from firsthand experience: doing things the Right Way is incredibly hard in no small measure because figuring out what you actually want to do is incredibly hard. There have been many times when I thought I was building something for the ages only to discover that I had made a bad assumption, or technology changed, or the market changed, or my own desires changed. The process of meeting human needs is messy because both human needs and the tools we have at our disposal are a constantly moving target.

_ph_ 6y ago
You are right, not all is crap. But too many people are not aware how much is crap and are pretty naive about using libraries. I don't think it is an accident, that e.g. the Java universe has uncountable numbers of libraries and Java projects have unbelievable many dependencies and e.g. Lisp has a percived lack of libraries. There are many reasons for that, but also, that Lisp programmers tend to rely on libraries less.
- lisper 6y ago
  > Lisp has a percived [sic] lack of libraries Lisp is also widely perceived as an interpreted language. Willful ignorance does not make reality even if it is widespread.
xupybd 6y ago
Wow, after your comment about having the luxury of taking time I wanted to find out how. I found your website in your bio. Very impressive and very cool to see even huge successes find the time to comment on HN.
- lisper 6y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. HN is one of the few remaining bastions of sanity in today's on-line world, so yeah, I make time for it.
dgb23 6y ago
> The process of meeting human needs is messy because both human needs and the tools we have at our disposal are a constantly moving target. Software development is inherently explorative. Finding the right solutions is exactly that: finding, discovery, learning and play. IMO This is best enabled by fast feedback loops and highly dynamic, interactive systems and visualization. Sometimes it is possible/feasible to parametrize a tool beyond what it is supposed to be doing to enable this kind of play and discovery, but also to make the process of building data, plumbing and so on just a bit more efficient and fun. Game programmers get that: At some point while developing a game, they create the tools that produce the data, or the parameters, typically controlled with a visual interface, a configuration language or a scripting language. Level editors, state machines, behavior trees, story boards, flow scripting etc. Another field that does this well is scientific computing, they use Jupiter Notebooks etc. with integrated REPLs and graph visualization. The whole "no-code" and "low-code" trend[0] also shows that people are willing to program with constrained, visual languages. It empowers them and connects their mental model more directly to a product (instead of having to go all the way through a team of implementers for every change that could be exposed as data). [0] I personnally don't like the terms "no-code" and "low-code" at all, because they describe what it is not, instead of what it is: visual programming. It's like "no-sql": Could be anything from a configuration file, to a document db, to a key-value store or a ACID graph db.

by lisper 6y ago

_ph_ 6y ago

You are right, not all is crap. But too many people are not aware how much is crap and are pretty naive about using libraries. I don't think it is an accident, that e.g. the Java universe has uncountable numbers of libraries and Java projects have unbelievable many dependencies and e.g. Lisp has a percived lack of libraries. There are many reasons for that, but also, that Lisp programmers tend to rely on libraries less.

lisper 6y ago
> Lisp has a percived [sic] lack of libraries Lisp is also widely perceived as an interpreted language. Willful ignorance does not make reality even if it is widespread.

xupybd 6y ago

Wow, after your comment about having the luxury of taking time I wanted to find out how. I found your website in your bio. Very impressive and very cool to see even huge successes find the time to comment on HN.

lisper 6y ago
Thanks for the kind words. HN is one of the few remaining bastions of sanity in today's on-line world, so yeah, I make time for it.

dgb23 6y ago

> The process of meeting human needs is messy because both human needs and the tools we have at our disposal are a constantly moving target. Software development is inherently explorative. Finding the right solutions is exactly that: finding, discovery, learning and play. IMO This is best enabled by fast feedback loops and highly dynamic, interactive systems and visualization. Sometimes it is possible/feasible to parametrize a tool beyond what it is supposed to be doing to enable this kind of play and discovery, but also to make the process of building data, plumbing and so on just a bit more efficient and fun. Game programmers get that: At some point while developing a game, they create the tools that produce the data, or the parameters, typically controlled with a visual interface, a configuration language or a scripting language. Level editors, state machines, behavior trees, story boards, flow scripting etc. Another field that does this well is scientific computing, they use Jupiter Notebooks etc. with integrated REPLs and graph visualization. The whole "no-code" and "low-code" trend[0] also shows that people are willing to program with constrained, visual languages. It empowers them and connects their mental model more directly to a product (instead of having to go all the way through a team of implementers for every change that could be exposed as data). [0] I personnally don't like the terms "no-code" and "low-code" at all, because they describe what it is not, instead of what it is: visual programming. It's like "no-sql": Could be anything from a configuration file, to a document db, to a key-value store or a ACID graph db.