4 ms·

I'm sympathetic to the goal of making software less terrible, but there's no actionable content here. Personally a lot of the code I've written has turned out

I'm sympathetic to the goal of making software less terrible, but there's no actionable content here. Personally a lot of the code I've written has turned out to be pretty terrible because I didn't know any better. Sometimes an environment is just conducive towards building software products in a certain way which doesn't consider performance as seriously. Copyright has probably hindered the evolution of software as well, resulting in a lot of duplicate efforts to recreate solutions to problems that have already been solved reasonably well by someone. I think what's really amazing is that tech companies worth billions or sometimes even trillions of dollars are still producing trash-tier software. I've heard tons of people complaining about Microsoft Teams being trash. Why can't Microsoft make a good chat app? Big tech companies should really be shamed more in public for shipping terrible products, they have no excuse with their near-infinitely deep pockets.

Bluestein 2y ago
> what's really amazing is that tech companies worth billions or sometimes even trillions of dollars are still producing trash-tier software. The site addresses that, obliquely, and goes to academia, and the way programming is taught - among other causes.- Not only do I totally resonate with the site’s points, the site is pretty substantial with different areas for various purposes, like showcasing projects, joining discussions, and learning from tutorials, all of which adhere to the stated goal and philosophy of the organization behind.- The homepage introduces the site’s purpose and offers links to key sections like projects, articles, and forums. The projects section showcases various software projects created by community members. There are 41 different software projects currently listed. They show - by example - what they mean, in practice.- (These projects range from game engines to utilities and are all focused on being hand-crafted and deeply understood by their creators.-) They have a "symposium" kind of section, where find detailed posts about different computing topics and techniques. This is where members share their knowledge and experiences about developing software, often providing in-depth tutorials and insights. They all come from member-motivated subjects, "surfacing" and "codifying" otherwise ephemeral chats from Discord.- They also have forums are a place for discussions. Members can ask questions, share updates about their projects, or discuss a variety of topics related to the ethos . It’s a community-driven area where people help each other out and share their progress.- There’s also a showcase area, where members post about their completed projects. This section is meant to highlight the work done by the community and inspire others to start their own projects. There are 41 different software projects currently linked on the site.- I love how the whole project is laid out, and how the stated goals are brief, clear, cogent and to the point, with the showcased software and "goalpost" posts making and substantiating everything else.- The site's also organizes events to further the goals, all in all, pretty solid.-
- TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
  I'd agree that the current educational models for programming aren't the most effective, but I don't think any superior alternatives have been proposed or been made available. If someone developed a superior alternative then they would probably be able to quickly out-compete a bunch of companies, and eventually that new model would become widespread. Personally I think that current platforms have too many layers of cruft that has never been cleaned up, so people have been forced to continue building bad abstractions on top of everything. We need base layers that integrate the lessons from the last couple of decades. For all of the faults with the Web and tools like Electron, they've helped enable a massive amount of people to ship real useful software. Ideally there would be superior alternatives to something like Electron while still remaining accessible. One interesting example is ImGUI; I tried it out a while back and was amazed by the level of performance, but still had to deal with a lot of useless details related to build tools and cross-platform idiosyncrasies.
  - bvisness 2y ago
    > Ideally there would be superior alternatives to something like Electron while still remaining accessible. That's exactly why we in the Handmade Network community are building Orca (https://orca-app.dev/ https://orca-app.dev/). It will take a while, but that's the goal.

Bluestein 2y ago

> what's really amazing is that tech companies worth billions or sometimes even trillions of dollars are still producing trash-tier software. The site addresses that, obliquely, and goes to academia, and the way programming is taught - among other causes.- Not only do I totally resonate with the site’s points, the site is pretty substantial with different areas for various purposes, like showcasing projects, joining discussions, and learning from tutorials, all of which adhere to the stated goal and philosophy of the organization behind.- The homepage introduces the site’s purpose and offers links to key sections like projects, articles, and forums. The projects section showcases various software projects created by community members. There are 41 different software projects currently listed. They show - by example - what they mean, in practice.- (These projects range from game engines to utilities and are all focused on being hand-crafted and deeply understood by their creators.-) They have a "symposium" kind of section, where find detailed posts about different computing topics and techniques. This is where members share their knowledge and experiences about developing software, often providing in-depth tutorials and insights. They all come from member-motivated subjects, "surfacing" and "codifying" otherwise ephemeral chats from Discord.- They also have forums are a place for discussions. Members can ask questions, share updates about their projects, or discuss a variety of topics related to the ethos . It’s a community-driven area where people help each other out and share their progress.- There’s also a showcase area, where members post about their completed projects. This section is meant to highlight the work done by the community and inspire others to start their own projects. There are 41 different software projects currently linked on the site.- I love how the whole project is laid out, and how the stated goals are brief, clear, cogent and to the point, with the showcased software and "goalpost" posts making and substantiating everything else.- The site's also organizes events to further the goals, all in all, pretty solid.-

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
I'd agree that the current educational models for programming aren't the most effective, but I don't think any superior alternatives have been proposed or been made available. If someone developed a superior alternative then they would probably be able to quickly out-compete a bunch of companies, and eventually that new model would become widespread. Personally I think that current platforms have too many layers of cruft that has never been cleaned up, so people have been forced to continue building bad abstractions on top of everything. We need base layers that integrate the lessons from the last couple of decades. For all of the faults with the Web and tools like Electron, they've helped enable a massive amount of people to ship real useful software. Ideally there would be superior alternatives to something like Electron while still remaining accessible. One interesting example is ImGUI; I tried it out a while back and was amazed by the level of performance, but still had to deal with a lot of useless details related to build tools and cross-platform idiosyncrasies.
- bvisness 2y ago
  > Ideally there would be superior alternatives to something like Electron while still remaining accessible. That's exactly why we in the Handmade Network community are building Orca (https://orca-app.dev/ https://orca-app.dev/). It will take a while, but that's the goal.