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I prefer graphical interfaces to declarative languages with escape hatches to a lower level form. I don't like what can go wrong with declarative tools or APIs

I prefer graphical interfaces to declarative languages with escape hatches to a lower level form. I don't like what can go wrong with declarative tools or APIs that are too high level. Don't get me wrong, SQL is brilliant, but I feel like when the complexity of the underlying system is high, declarative approaches become scarier and scarier. If something goes wrong or doesn't do what I need all those elided things are no longer elided and I'm now at the mercy of understanding all of it with no escape other than to upstream a change, kill a project, or change technologies. The Linux ecosystem is insane, but so is every software technology of sufficient size. I sincerely do not need my downloading of some tool I've never used to be reproduced, more than likely I will uninstall it after a half hour of playing with it. Or if I. In a dire situation, pin a version Different tastes for sure.

eternityforest 3y ago
There are definitely different use cases, but I generally find that complex black box tools are generally near perfect in practice. And a lot of the time, if there's a bug in the low level thing, it's in a less commonly used feature, and you can often reframe your project to do things in the same way everyone else does things. If someone else successfully used a complex framework, I assume I will be successful too, as long as I use it in exactly the same way as them. Sometimes that requires hacks that have a performance hit, but overall it cam still be faster than writing your own code that you wouldn't have time to optimize. I pretty rarely try any tool I wouldn't want pinned, since I don't tend to play around with the single-function more experimental stuff, and gravitate towards one size fits all kind of stuff(If I need to play a sound, I'll just use mpv, regardless of if there is something lighter or I don't need the features). If you are interested in tinkering at all then the whole thing goes out the window and complex tools become an "Abandon all hope" kind of thing though.
- skulk 3y ago
  I don't think you're aware of this but the individual you're responding to has a vendetta against Nix. Watch and you'll see shallow dismissals of Nix on every thread here by them. From what I can tell, they tried it once, got frustrated which hurt their ego a bit so they take it out on every post here. Either way I like your comment and will refer to it for my evangelizing.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    It's not a vendetta it's an opinion. I don't like a technology, they do. We had a reasonable conversation about our view points. I did try it, it wasn't for me. Just like how I tried COBOL and that wasn't for me. That's life.

eternityforest 3y ago

There are definitely different use cases, but I generally find that complex black box tools are generally near perfect in practice. And a lot of the time, if there's a bug in the low level thing, it's in a less commonly used feature, and you can often reframe your project to do things in the same way everyone else does things. If someone else successfully used a complex framework, I assume I will be successful too, as long as I use it in exactly the same way as them. Sometimes that requires hacks that have a performance hit, but overall it cam still be faster than writing your own code that you wouldn't have time to optimize. I pretty rarely try any tool I wouldn't want pinned, since I don't tend to play around with the single-function more experimental stuff, and gravitate towards one size fits all kind of stuff(If I need to play a sound, I'll just use mpv, regardless of if there is something lighter or I don't need the features). If you are interested in tinkering at all then the whole thing goes out the window and complex tools become an "Abandon all hope" kind of thing though.

skulk 3y ago
I don't think you're aware of this but the individual you're responding to has a vendetta against Nix. Watch and you'll see shallow dismissals of Nix on every thread here by them. From what I can tell, they tried it once, got frustrated which hurt their ego a bit so they take it out on every post here. Either way I like your comment and will refer to it for my evangelizing.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  It's not a vendetta it's an opinion. I don't like a technology, they do. We had a reasonable conversation about our view points. I did try it, it wasn't for me. Just like how I tried COBOL and that wasn't for me. That's life.