7 ms·

This post ignores the Lindy effect. Things that have been around for pretty long are likely to stick around for much longer. For example, Unix, Emacs, or Firef

by nextos 3y ago

This post ignores the Lindy effect. Things that have been around for pretty long are likely to stick around for much longer. For example, Unix, Emacs, or Firefox (Netscape) are likely to be quite popular 10 or 20 years down the line. The OS or the editor du jour is not. This is a good rule of thumb for choosing what to invest your time in.

eviks 3y ago
Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now, and the author mentioned using even more niche apps with long history, and a lot of his challenges are with things that have been around breaking other things that have been around, so how does he ignore the effect?
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  > Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now They are a lot smaller % than vs code or chrome, but compared to most other software they have a huge user base. They are popular software.
  - lodovic 3y ago
    Definition nitpicking: They are only popular among a specific crowd. When less than 5% of all users use the software, I wouldn't call it popular globally.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      FF was at 6% in 2021 apparently. And emacs, because it is not spyware, unlike most competitors of it, has an unknown user base. The definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is sufficiently vague though; you put a % on it, they don’t.
      - eviks 3y ago
        Spying isn't the only method of gaining knowledge, polls exist And if the definition is vague enough to include both, you can't use it as an argument to exclude one
        anonzzzies 3y ago
        > polls exist Yes, and they are also notoriously unreliable. With KYCd users (which won’t be the case in voting ‘best coding editor’) it is even unreliable, let alone things like reddit polls.
        eviks 3y ago
        They aren't as unreliable as to miss an elephant in the room of eternal ignorance, and you don't need to shift to "the best", a basic "have you even heard of this" is sufficient
- t-3 3y ago
  Firefox is definitely popular. If you stop a random person on the street and ask them "what is firefox?", they'll probably know that it's a web browser, and a good number will have used it at some point in their lives. Emacs can probably not be considered popular except maybe among the niche of programmers who use Linux or UNIX derivatives.
  - eviks 3y ago
    Why would I need to resort to these idirect measures of knowledge about the past when there is direct data on actual use currently?
    - t-3 3y ago
      6% of worldwide users doesn't sound unpopular to me unless you compare to the Chrome monopoly. I'm just giving you an alternate viewpoint to show that you shouldn't get caught up on how much more popular the most popular program is when trying to determine whether something is popular. There are too many browsers to list, but most people are using Chrome/Edge/Safari or Firefox.
      - eviks 3y ago
        6% wasn't your argument, and is also wrong - that's only counting desktop, so it's missing a huge part of the market, which brings the number down to a mere 2.6%, try to spin that as popular unless "monopoly" And your last statement is true with just Chrome, so you can add any other browser there for the same effect
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Holy smokes! There's a formal name for it!! I always privately called it a "Legacy Tail". It was a factor in the selection of a lightweight markup language to support old-fashioned industry (aerospace), but I think it should be a factor in any software selection, to be honest. Thanks for teaching me a thing!
- gofreddygo 3y ago
  I came across that term from Nassim Taleb's books and talks. Fascinating.
- p_l 3y ago
  Can you say something more about the markup language case?
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    Short version? With a pile of XML docs, Asciidoc's DocBook XML backend represented the "Legacy Tail" or Lenny Effect (Lenny Tail?) that gave us some insurance we'd have a stable format. We didn't see that in the Markdown ecosystem - we would have had to pick and choose Markdown variants and extensions, anyway - and the ReStructuredText ecosystem had no such tail and too many Python/Sphinx dependencies (corporate infosec had a real chip on its shoulder about Python). There was a lot of nights and weekends spent prototyping and wrestling with various old aero/milspec formats, but at the end of the day we came out with a publications format that could do more than the original could, on common tooling, where everyone who wanted to could contribute. I put it in the "win" column.
steve1977 3y ago
Yes and no. Windows and macOS are still around. But not really in the form I'd like them to be (and they once were).

by nextos 3y ago

eviks 3y ago

Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now, and the author mentioned using even more niche apps with long history, and a lot of his challenges are with things that have been around breaking other things that have been around, so how does he ignore the effect?

anonzzzies 3y ago
> Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now They are a lot smaller % than vs code or chrome, but compared to most other software they have a huge user base. They are popular software.
- lodovic 3y ago
  Definition nitpicking: They are only popular among a specific crowd. When less than 5% of all users use the software, I wouldn't call it popular globally.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    FF was at 6% in 2021 apparently. And emacs, because it is not spyware, unlike most competitors of it, has an unknown user base. The definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is sufficiently vague though; you put a % on it, they don’t.
    - eviks 3y ago
      Spying isn't the only method of gaining knowledge, polls exist And if the definition is vague enough to include both, you can't use it as an argument to exclude one
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
        > polls exist Yes, and they are also notoriously unreliable. With KYCd users (which won’t be the case in voting ‘best coding editor’) it is even unreliable, let alone things like reddit polls.
        eviks 3y ago
        They aren't as unreliable as to miss an elephant in the room of eternal ignorance, and you don't need to shift to "the best", a basic "have you even heard of this" is sufficient
t-3 3y ago
Firefox is definitely popular. If you stop a random person on the street and ask them "what is firefox?", they'll probably know that it's a web browser, and a good number will have used it at some point in their lives. Emacs can probably not be considered popular except maybe among the niche of programmers who use Linux or UNIX derivatives.
- eviks 3y ago
  Why would I need to resort to these idirect measures of knowledge about the past when there is direct data on actual use currently?
  - t-3 3y ago
    6% of worldwide users doesn't sound unpopular to me unless you compare to the Chrome monopoly. I'm just giving you an alternate viewpoint to show that you shouldn't get caught up on how much more popular the most popular program is when trying to determine whether something is popular. There are too many browsers to list, but most people are using Chrome/Edge/Safari or Firefox.
    - eviks 3y ago
      6% wasn't your argument, and is also wrong - that's only counting desktop, so it's missing a huge part of the market, which brings the number down to a mere 2.6%, try to spin that as popular unless "monopoly" And your last statement is true with just Chrome, so you can add any other browser there for the same effect

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Holy smokes! There's a formal name for it!! I always privately called it a "Legacy Tail". It was a factor in the selection of a lightweight markup language to support old-fashioned industry (aerospace), but I think it should be a factor in any software selection, to be honest. Thanks for teaching me a thing!

gofreddygo 3y ago
I came across that term from Nassim Taleb's books and talks. Fascinating.
p_l 3y ago
Can you say something more about the markup language case?
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Short version? With a pile of XML docs, Asciidoc's DocBook XML backend represented the "Legacy Tail" or Lenny Effect (Lenny Tail?) that gave us some insurance we'd have a stable format. We didn't see that in the Markdown ecosystem - we would have had to pick and choose Markdown variants and extensions, anyway - and the ReStructuredText ecosystem had no such tail and too many Python/Sphinx dependencies (corporate infosec had a real chip on its shoulder about Python). There was a lot of nights and weekends spent prototyping and wrestling with various old aero/milspec formats, but at the end of the day we came out with a publications format that could do more than the original could, on common tooling, where everyone who wanted to could contribute. I put it in the "win" column.

steve1977 3y ago

Yes and no. Windows and macOS are still around. But not really in the form I'd like them to be (and they once were).