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To paraphrase Bjarne Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of version control systems: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

by ozim 3y ago

jorvi 3y ago
Reminds me of what Bungie said in one of their GDCs. They don’t mind it (too much) if people get heated on their forum or subreddit, because people who care about Destiny are the ones that get worked up. It’s when most stop complaining or praising that they get worried, because it means apathy has set in.
- samtho 3y ago
  This is a bit of wisdom that is easy to miss when you are developing a product. When people are getting worked about something and are very vocal, positive or negative, it means they care in some way. Instead of going into the doom spiral of “nobody likes what I’m building,” you can reframe it to be, “people are very passionate about what I’m building,” which is a better way to start the discussion of how to make what you have better. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.
- worrycue 3y ago
  YoshiP director/producer of FFXIV from Square Enix said the same thing. "3. Learn to listen and adapt. A complaint is worth twice a compliment. The silent always leave first. If citizens are complaining, it means they still care."
tialaramex 3y ago
It's very much a "glass half full" perspective, which gets tiresome from somebody like Bjarne who is very resistant to the idea that he's made mistakes. It excuses lots of bad mistakes because hey, if people really felt that way they wouldn't use C++ right? But of course increasingly they aren't using C++ because it sucks, which is why they were complaining. Unlike C++, Git has put considerable work into responding to complaints, understanding that while yes, they wouldn't complain if they didn't use it, they also wouldn't complain if there weren't so many things to complain about. Lots of things we use every day don't get many complaints because there's nothing much wrong with them. Even the brutal Git command line is less hostile today than it was originally.
- Guvante 3y ago
  I feel like you are being a bit unfair to Bjarne to to my knowledge isn't so much saying "we didn't make mistakes" as much as "we didn't make mistakes we should fix". C++ is the juggernaut it is because it just works. Your antient C++ codebase doesn't need many changes to get up to date on a language level. That doesn't mean it is painless to update toolchains but it does mean that the language isn't making that pain worse. As part of maintaining this the bar for breaking old code isn't "we shouldn't have done that" or "we wouldn't have don't that" but something more like "almost all code using this is wrong anyway". Most critiques of C++ do not raise to that level and so aren't fundamentally needing to be fixed.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Bjarne is quite happy to admit that we made mistakes, but that wasn't my criticism was it? I'm saying that Bjarne doesn't like to admit that Bjarne made mistakes.
    - Guvante 3y ago
      You can't be vague and make your point here. I explained a category of "mistakes" and you simply repeated your point. To be clear my point wasn't about who made the mistake but that some categories of mistake aren't fixable. Oftentimes people conflate "don't change it" with "it wasn't a mistake". Found an "I made a mistake" that is very explicitly self owned. Finding counterfactuals is nearly impossible so going to leave it at that without more specificity. > Unified function call: The notational distinction between x.f(y) and f(x,y) comes from the flawed OO notion that there always is a single most important object for an operation. I made a mistake adopting that. It was a shallow understanding at the time (but extremely fashionable). Even then, I pointed to sqrt(2) and x+y as examples of problems caused by that view. With generic programming, the x.f(y) vs. f(x,y) distinction becomes a library design and usage issue (an inflexibility). With concepts, such problems get formalized. Again, the issues and solutions go back decades. Allowing virtual arguments for f(x,y,z) gives us multimethods.
      - 3y ago

To paraphrase Bjarne Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of version control systems: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

by ozim 3y ago

To paraphrase Bjarne Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of version control systems: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

jorvi 3y ago

Reminds me of what Bungie said in one of their GDCs. They don’t mind it (too much) if people get heated on their forum or subreddit, because people who care about Destiny are the ones that get worked up. It’s when most stop complaining or praising that they get worried, because it means apathy has set in.

samtho 3y ago
This is a bit of wisdom that is easy to miss when you are developing a product. When people are getting worked about something and are very vocal, positive or negative, it means they care in some way. Instead of going into the doom spiral of “nobody likes what I’m building,” you can reframe it to be, “people are very passionate about what I’m building,” which is a better way to start the discussion of how to make what you have better. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.
worrycue 3y ago
YoshiP director/producer of FFXIV from Square Enix said the same thing. "3. Learn to listen and adapt. A complaint is worth twice a compliment. The silent always leave first. If citizens are complaining, it means they still care."

tialaramex 3y ago

It's very much a "glass half full" perspective, which gets tiresome from somebody like Bjarne who is very resistant to the idea that he's made mistakes. It excuses lots of bad mistakes because hey, if people really felt that way they wouldn't use C++ right? But of course increasingly they aren't using C++ because it sucks, which is why they were complaining. Unlike C++, Git has put considerable work into responding to complaints, understanding that while yes, they wouldn't complain if they didn't use it, they also wouldn't complain if there weren't so many things to complain about. Lots of things we use every day don't get many complaints because there's nothing much wrong with them. Even the brutal Git command line is less hostile today than it was originally.

Guvante 3y ago
I feel like you are being a bit unfair to Bjarne to to my knowledge isn't so much saying "we didn't make mistakes" as much as "we didn't make mistakes we should fix". C++ is the juggernaut it is because it just works. Your antient C++ codebase doesn't need many changes to get up to date on a language level. That doesn't mean it is painless to update toolchains but it does mean that the language isn't making that pain worse. As part of maintaining this the bar for breaking old code isn't "we shouldn't have done that" or "we wouldn't have don't that" but something more like "almost all code using this is wrong anyway". Most critiques of C++ do not raise to that level and so aren't fundamentally needing to be fixed.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Bjarne is quite happy to admit that we made mistakes, but that wasn't my criticism was it? I'm saying that Bjarne doesn't like to admit that Bjarne made mistakes.
  - Guvante 3y ago
    You can't be vague and make your point here. I explained a category of "mistakes" and you simply repeated your point. To be clear my point wasn't about who made the mistake but that some categories of mistake aren't fixable. Oftentimes people conflate "don't change it" with "it wasn't a mistake". Found an "I made a mistake" that is very explicitly self owned. Finding counterfactuals is nearly impossible so going to leave it at that without more specificity. > Unified function call: The notational distinction between x.f(y) and f(x,y) comes from the flawed OO notion that there always is a single most important object for an operation. I made a mistake adopting that. It was a shallow understanding at the time (but extremely fashionable). Even then, I pointed to sqrt(2) and x+y as examples of problems caused by that view. With generic programming, the x.f(y) vs. f(x,y) distinction becomes a library design and usage issue (an inflexibility). With concepts, such problems get formalized. Again, the issues and solutions go back decades. Allowing virtual arguments for f(x,y,z) gives us multimethods.
    - 3y ago