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> Building something from scratch is rarely a good idea. In the context of this article, I agree. Professional products should probably not try to build everyt

by mkaic 4y ago

> Building something from scratch is rarely a good idea. In the context of this article, I agree. Professional products should probably not try to build everything from scratch. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that building things from scratch as personal projects is one of the absolute best ways to gain a deep understanding of a topic. Even if you go on to use graph visualization engines built by others in all your future work, that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a go on your own time if you're interested in trying it out. Not trying to be contrarian or criticize the article, just my 2 cents. In general I agree with the sentiment of using existing solutions wherever possible.

mbuda 4y ago
Yep, the history here is that we tried out a couple of standalone tools with the appropriate license (e.g., VisJS, which is a great library), but nothing was suitable after some point, and then the best thing was to build. You learn more + we put it open source + we can integrate some other, maybe more scalable visualization engines in the future :D
stuntkite 4y ago
It depends on how you value your time and effort. Not every idea should be valued by its market fit. I don't think people should write code they are uninterested in writing. That's my litmus test for myself. Usually when I'm really, really interested the thing I'm aiming at doing initially isn't even about what I'm really trying to solve. It's picking away at the cruft over something and then I can see what's on the other side. Don't write things from scratch if you absolutely hate it and you are only doing it because you think the market will buy it and you wanna be a big biz, unless you feel like it. I don't know, YMMV. Programming is stupid and I plan to be a pig farmer as soon as possible.
- dtomicevic 4y ago
  haha well, while running a pig farm is also a difficult business, there are some interesting challenges you can tackle :D also you could write software to manage some aspects of your pig farm
  - stuntkite 4y ago
    Definitely. I have some giant robots and spend a lot of my time with computer vision. I'm gonna put them on tank treads and have them tend to the farm. I just like... fuckin do not want to ever be asked to and feel like I should care about anything related to javascript.... ever again... past 2024, but with just a tiny nudge, I could just live that life tomorrow.
    - gregfagan 4y ago
      Wow… did JavaScript hurt your children? Have you tried typescript? It’s not so bad.
      - stuntkite 4y ago
        Yes. And it's hurting yours. But you know, some people like all sort of other things that are literal poisonous torture. Eh, get in where you fit in.
- jylam 4y ago
  I don't thing Parent was talking about business at all. Personal projects are not things you do because of potential business opportunities in my book. I wrote a GameBoy emulator, several raytracers, countless demos on 8bits machines, countless "IoT" things, an automatic cat feeder, a 3d scanner and much more, I never ever had the goal to transform that into money, that was for fun. Of course you won't write anything that you hate at first, because it's for fun. But hating something for some days or weeks is part of the fun, too. You are challenging yourself, not doing it the easy way, to appreciate how well the others are doing. If you want to turn it into a business, so yeah, don't write a graph visualization engine, or crypto stuff, or anything really. Get a job, that can be fun too, and let the entrepreneurs figure out the rest.
  - stuntkite 4y ago
    I see what you're getting at and concede that you may be totally right that I'm not on the same page as Parent, but if the reason for not doing something dumb that you'll probably fail at that other people are doing better at, that lets say you also hate, isn't for building a business... What are you doing that for? Pathological self harm? I think you and I agree. I'm not being crass, but I'd if you had more thoughts on what I'm trying to say about what you're trying to say I'd be interested in further discussion.
dtomicevic 4y ago
agreed, you can learn a lot by building something from scratch. also, some of the successful software tools we use today came from personal projects so it can be a win win
xani_ 4y ago
I agree. Making a personal blog engine gave me new hatred for anything frontend and a deal of compassion for people that have to deal with that mess professionally.
- stuntkite 4y ago
  What blog engine and why did you and I assume your partners feel like the world needed another one? Not being glib. I'm genuinely curious.
  - taubek 4y ago
    Yeah, I'd like also to take a look at it.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    It didn't need another one which is why I won't be showing it ;p. It was also project where I learned Go and did a bunch of redesigns along the way so it is a but of a mess. I'd also hate idea of someone else actually using it, or worse, reporting bugs, because just using some static site generator would've been much better idea and I kinda designed it for my workflow. It did a lot of performance wankery, like templating system (not my lib, I just used available one) being just Go code embedded in HTML that needed to be compiled with the rest of the app, or pre-generating HTML from Markdown on load. Using same language to write app as to write templates was nice tho. Most of it was mostly "how far I can go without cutting features" because really going from 10ms per page to 0.2 ms per page has no difference after client RTT is involved. Hell, even on localhost for some reasons Chrome always have few ms delay before starting download compared to any cli client, chrome shows anywhere between 3 and 8ms to start downloading, while FF sits at 0ms I originally planned to have some fun with HTTP2.0 PUSH but, well, while I kinda believed on authority that it is useful for something it turned out to be entirely stupid idea which apparently nobody bothered to test before pushing it into standard so I didn't get to do it. Maybe I should try again with HTTP3.0 hints.
    - stuntkite 4y ago
      It sounds like you learned a lot... but a blog platform to do that? Like why not just pivot to something that might need the enhancements you're providing with go? I'm asking this for rhetorical purposes. I know, I know deeply why. heh. I'm glad you came out of it ok. Thank you for your honest response.

by mkaic 4y ago

mbuda 4y ago

Yep, the history here is that we tried out a couple of standalone tools with the appropriate license (e.g., VisJS, which is a great library), but nothing was suitable after some point, and then the best thing was to build. You learn more + we put it open source + we can integrate some other, maybe more scalable visualization engines in the future :D

stuntkite 4y ago

It depends on how you value your time and effort. Not every idea should be valued by its market fit. I don't think people should write code they are uninterested in writing. That's my litmus test for myself. Usually when I'm really, really interested the thing I'm aiming at doing initially isn't even about what I'm really trying to solve. It's picking away at the cruft over something and then I can see what's on the other side. Don't write things from scratch if you absolutely hate it and you are only doing it because you think the market will buy it and you wanna be a big biz, unless you feel like it. I don't know, YMMV. Programming is stupid and I plan to be a pig farmer as soon as possible.

dtomicevic 4y ago
haha well, while running a pig farm is also a difficult business, there are some interesting challenges you can tackle :D also you could write software to manage some aspects of your pig farm
- stuntkite 4y ago
  Definitely. I have some giant robots and spend a lot of my time with computer vision. I'm gonna put them on tank treads and have them tend to the farm. I just like... fuckin do not want to ever be asked to and feel like I should care about anything related to javascript.... ever again... past 2024, but with just a tiny nudge, I could just live that life tomorrow.
  - gregfagan 4y ago
    Wow… did JavaScript hurt your children? Have you tried typescript? It’s not so bad.
    - stuntkite 4y ago
      Yes. And it's hurting yours. But you know, some people like all sort of other things that are literal poisonous torture. Eh, get in where you fit in.
jylam 4y ago
I don't thing Parent was talking about business at all. Personal projects are not things you do because of potential business opportunities in my book. I wrote a GameBoy emulator, several raytracers, countless demos on 8bits machines, countless "IoT" things, an automatic cat feeder, a 3d scanner and much more, I never ever had the goal to transform that into money, that was for fun. Of course you won't write anything that you hate at first, because it's for fun. But hating something for some days or weeks is part of the fun, too. You are challenging yourself, not doing it the easy way, to appreciate how well the others are doing. If you want to turn it into a business, so yeah, don't write a graph visualization engine, or crypto stuff, or anything really. Get a job, that can be fun too, and let the entrepreneurs figure out the rest.
- stuntkite 4y ago
  I see what you're getting at and concede that you may be totally right that I'm not on the same page as Parent, but if the reason for not doing something dumb that you'll probably fail at that other people are doing better at, that lets say you also hate, isn't for building a business... What are you doing that for? Pathological self harm? I think you and I agree. I'm not being crass, but I'd if you had more thoughts on what I'm trying to say about what you're trying to say I'd be interested in further discussion.

dtomicevic 4y ago

agreed, you can learn a lot by building something from scratch. also, some of the successful software tools we use today came from personal projects so it can be a win win

xani_ 4y ago

I agree. Making a personal blog engine gave me new hatred for anything frontend and a deal of compassion for people that have to deal with that mess professionally.

stuntkite 4y ago
What blog engine and why did you and I assume your partners feel like the world needed another one? Not being glib. I'm genuinely curious.
- taubek 4y ago
  Yeah, I'd like also to take a look at it.
- xani_ 4y ago
  It didn't need another one which is why I won't be showing it ;p. It was also project where I learned Go and did a bunch of redesigns along the way so it is a but of a mess. I'd also hate idea of someone else actually using it, or worse, reporting bugs, because just using some static site generator would've been much better idea and I kinda designed it for my workflow. It did a lot of performance wankery, like templating system (not my lib, I just used available one) being just Go code embedded in HTML that needed to be compiled with the rest of the app, or pre-generating HTML from Markdown on load. Using same language to write app as to write templates was nice tho. Most of it was mostly "how far I can go without cutting features" because really going from 10ms per page to 0.2 ms per page has no difference after client RTT is involved. Hell, even on localhost for some reasons Chrome always have few ms delay before starting download compared to any cli client, chrome shows anywhere between 3 and 8ms to start downloading, while FF sits at 0ms I originally planned to have some fun with HTTP2.0 PUSH but, well, while I kinda believed on authority that it is useful for something it turned out to be entirely stupid idea which apparently nobody bothered to test before pushing it into standard so I didn't get to do it. Maybe I should try again with HTTP3.0 hints.
  - stuntkite 4y ago
    It sounds like you learned a lot... but a blog platform to do that? Like why not just pivot to something that might need the enhancements you're providing with go? I'm asking this for rhetorical purposes. I know, I know deeply why. heh. I'm glad you came out of it ok. Thank you for your honest response.