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> I have to admit that I don't understand half of this blog post It's because you haven't read al-Ghazali yet. (definitely the most pompous and self-important

> I have to admit that I don't understand half of this blog post It's because you haven't read al-Ghazali yet. (definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post)

bartread 1y ago
> Not driven by logic, anger... I don't know that I fully buy this either, at least not the anger part. I can look back on all this with wry amusement nowadays but I remember it being pretty frustrating at the time. It sort of felt like, well, either you knew what the impact of unpublishing all your packages would be and you did it anyway, which makes you kind of antisocial, or you didn't know what the impact would be but did it anyway, which makes you kind of a hothead. And in this latest piece Azer has admitted that he didn't understand what the impact would be so... y'know... I do wonder if anger was at least a small factor. Regardless, it's pretty clear that npm bear a lot of the responsibility for what happened. It's also something that happened a very long time ago and, as I've already implied, is just a funny story nowadays, not something I can manage any ire towards Azer over.
- npn 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bartread 1y ago
    Thanks: I love comments like this. I print them out, and get them framed and wall-mounted. They make me stronger and more virile.
- thomassmith65 1y ago
  Not to dump on the author, but following the Serenity Prayer would have led to a happier outcome... grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference
  - pointlessone 1y ago
    He clearly could delete his packages so he did. In the left-pad incident, apparently, the community didn’t have the serenity to accept that.
    - thomassmith65 1y ago
      Fair enough. If he considered that a victory, then good for him.
- IggleSniggle 1y ago
  The 3rd option is the one Azer describes in the post: He wants to remove his stuff, but isn't sure what the right way to do it is, so he asks npm. npm provides him with a set of scripts to run to remove his stuff, and he, presuming that it's "ok" if npm told him to go ahead and run them, runs them. The impact isn't especially important to him, But since npm just gave him a set of scripts with an implicit "oh okay you want to remove your stuff, here I wrote you a script you can run to get it done," makes it more of an npm choice to handle it in this manner. npm asked him to handle it this way, so he did.
  - k__ 1y ago
    What would the alternative have looked like? If NPM would have prevented the depublishing, he would have made a scene and in the worst case, they would have looked bad. How they actually handled it, the library author got full freedom but also full responsibility
    - msla 1y ago
      At a certain point, no, you can't unpublish because the world only has one arrow of time. Imagine if Torvalds decides to unpublish his code in the Linux kernel. It's easy to understand how that would work: His code would remain out there for all time because doing anything else would be a massive disruption and cause people actual problems. People don't just give others a way to hurt them like that if they know what they're doing, even if they got a lot of value from them in the past. Lesson: Vendor your dependencies, I guess. Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation.
      - bartread 1y ago
        > Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation. Very true. Although, from 2012 onwards, up to around the time of the leftpad incident, the trend - and the pressure - was to minimise the amount of work your code was doing and to publish tiny packages that only did one thing or solved one problem, deferring to other tiny packages for anything non-core. I remember colleagues more embedded in the JS world than I was passionately arguing for this in 2012/13. And it did make some sense: bandwidth matters, particularly on mobile devices (which became a key source of traffic during that period) so why pull in some gigantic do everything library when you only need a handful of functions[0]? Sure, minifying and pruning help but, due to JS's nature, pruning can only get you so far. But, yes, I think leftpad was something of a teaching moment on the downsides of this approach. [0] Of course, if you then stick 6 different tracking scripts in all your pages, it's super-easy to undo all the good you've done by minimising your bundle size, but that's a different conversation.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  What’s anti-social is unilaterally making your code dependent on someone’s package and then getting mad at them when they choose to remove it. This whole problem was trivially avoidable, and people get mad at him because they were too lazy to avoid it.
  - bartread 1y ago
    They weren't too lazy to avoid it. Depending on other peoples' packages was actively encouraged within the JS community during that period, and the perceived benefits of doing so were loudly trumpeted.
    - nkrisc 1y ago
      And if you did without due diligence of the downsides, you have only yourself to blame. Lots of people made a big mistake, they found out the hard way. Lesson learned.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Personally I understand both Al-Ghazali and "Not driven by logic, anger" parts very well. I have been in that position as well. Being neutral and seeing a good way forward is not something practiced, taught or celebrated in western, esp. American culture much. One always needs to have a thrust source (mostly an emotion driven by logic, taught during being grown up (e.g.: You should be angry about it)) to make decisions. In fact, sometimes, you just don't have a thrust source, you just feel like doing it. It feels the right thing to do, and you do it with no emotions attached. This is a boon, in fact it's called "clarity" brought by being with yourself. Either spending time outdoors, doing some reflection work, or by meditating. I use the same methods when I face with a non-urgent but important decision. Let the way reveal itself. Putting logic and emotions aside and finding the right way is not easy, or the process is not smooth sailing, but I never arrived to a wrong place by following that path.
toledocavani 1y ago
Who is al-Ghazali? I searched and found the Iraqi phisolopher, but couldn't understand how he is related
- tkiolp4 1y ago
  We westerns do the know much about the Socrates from the eastern side of the world. I can only imagine people from there know who al-Ghazali was just like we know who Sartre was. So, im gonna try and read something by al-Ghazali.
  - akoculu 1y ago
    Let me explain myself on this; When this happened, people started making assumptions. A few of them: 1. I’m irrational 2. I’m angry 3. I’m greedy They came to one of these conclusions, based on how they see themselves in the same position. I can be of course one of these three in some other situations, but in the left pad incident, I done all purely with my heart, to stick to my values and principles which was behind my motivation to do open source for such a long time. Ghazali is the best source I’m aware of about how to put heart in the driver seat of life, and without fighting but using logic, greed, anger etc as tools. If my reference made curious about him, I couldn’t be more happy. Here’s a great lecture about his book, The Alchemy of Happiness: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWc0DflRQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWc0DflRQ
    - hermannj314 1y ago
      I bought the Alchemy of Happiness because of that sentence in your post. I always pay attention when someone recommends an author so earnestly.
      - akoculu 1y ago
        so happy to hear this! I hope you enjoy the reading. Also, feel free to check out the 4 hours long audio lecture on the book. It's really good!
    - 1y ago
akoculu 1y ago
When was the last time you were threatened (“we’ll will bang on your door and take down your accounts”) by a company like Kik and you defended the principles and values you believed until the end? I’m quite familiar with both western and eastern traditions, don’t know any better source than Ghazali’s “the alchemy of happiness” about how people make decisions. It’s kind of ironic to see people being triggered by just the mention of it though — just reflects what your heart tends to reject impulsively. I wish you curiosity. P.S Here’s the full quote, it entertainingly describes the ignorance here: “first, they didn't look at the dates of the emails. They don't understand the timeline. second, they can't relate to standing your ground in a high pressure situation involving threats. and third, they haven't read Al-Ghazali yet, don't quite understand how (free) people make decisions”
- nindalf 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - akoculu 1y ago
    And surely you read Ghazali and know what you’re talking about.
  - overbytecode 1y ago
    Why does it make him sound like a wanker? That’s a very uncharitable reading for no particular reason.
    - nindalf 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - bayindirh 1y ago
        Let's consider an example about a tangible phenomena: Gaussian Integration, Quantum Entanglement, Crystalline Structure Formation in Alloyed Metals with Heat Treatment, Combustion Dynamics in a Gasoline Engine, etc. Let's put the same sentence: "I'd love to explain to you, but if you haven't read $SOURCE_MATERIAL, you wouldn't understand it anyway". Does it sound pompous and insufferable?
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
aa-jv 1y ago
>(definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post) What compels you to say this? Would you be more satisfied if he'd suggested the reader acquaint themselves with Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo? Are you familiar with al-Ghazali, the scholar, or is he new to you? You have, rather literally, proven the philosophers point - while remaining, it seems, ignorant of it. Or perhaps, you mean to imply that /u/akoculu was doing a good deed not because he cared, but to show off? The irony is, al-Ghazali asked his readers to question their pomp and self-importance, and to do good deeds because they truly cared, not because it would result in social acknowledgement by the mass collective, whose motives should always be questioned, effectively. Perhaps, then, your position is more of a reflection of your own condition? One would hope your disdain is borne on an actual understanding of al-Ghazali's position, vis a vis self-doubt ... or rather, one would hope your current position is based on an ignorance of his works, actually. One should never feel so compelled to deny the enlightenment of others, especially if by doing so, you resort to personally-motivated obscurantism in response.
dang 1y ago
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Edit out swipes." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44245579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44245579.

> I have to admit that I don't understand half of this blog post It's because you haven't read al-Ghazali yet. (definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post)

bartread 1y ago

> Not driven by logic, anger... I don't know that I fully buy this either, at least not the anger part. I can look back on all this with wry amusement nowadays but I remember it being pretty frustrating at the time. It sort of felt like, well, either you knew what the impact of unpublishing all your packages would be and you did it anyway, which makes you kind of antisocial, or you didn't know what the impact would be but did it anyway, which makes you kind of a hothead. And in this latest piece Azer has admitted that he didn't understand what the impact would be so... y'know... I do wonder if anger was at least a small factor. Regardless, it's pretty clear that npm bear a lot of the responsibility for what happened. It's also something that happened a very long time ago and, as I've already implied, is just a funny story nowadays, not something I can manage any ire towards Azer over.

npn 1y ago
[flagged]
- bartread 1y ago
  Thanks: I love comments like this. I print them out, and get them framed and wall-mounted. They make me stronger and more virile.
thomassmith65 1y ago
Not to dump on the author, but following the Serenity Prayer would have led to a happier outcome... grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference
- pointlessone 1y ago
  He clearly could delete his packages so he did. In the left-pad incident, apparently, the community didn’t have the serenity to accept that.
  - thomassmith65 1y ago
    Fair enough. If he considered that a victory, then good for him.
IggleSniggle 1y ago
The 3rd option is the one Azer describes in the post: He wants to remove his stuff, but isn't sure what the right way to do it is, so he asks npm. npm provides him with a set of scripts to run to remove his stuff, and he, presuming that it's "ok" if npm told him to go ahead and run them, runs them. The impact isn't especially important to him, But since npm just gave him a set of scripts with an implicit "oh okay you want to remove your stuff, here I wrote you a script you can run to get it done," makes it more of an npm choice to handle it in this manner. npm asked him to handle it this way, so he did.
- k__ 1y ago
  What would the alternative have looked like? If NPM would have prevented the depublishing, he would have made a scene and in the worst case, they would have looked bad. How they actually handled it, the library author got full freedom but also full responsibility
  - msla 1y ago
    At a certain point, no, you can't unpublish because the world only has one arrow of time. Imagine if Torvalds decides to unpublish his code in the Linux kernel. It's easy to understand how that would work: His code would remain out there for all time because doing anything else would be a massive disruption and cause people actual problems. People don't just give others a way to hurt them like that if they know what they're doing, even if they got a lot of value from them in the past. Lesson: Vendor your dependencies, I guess. Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation.
    - bartread 1y ago
      > Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation. Very true. Although, from 2012 onwards, up to around the time of the leftpad incident, the trend - and the pressure - was to minimise the amount of work your code was doing and to publish tiny packages that only did one thing or solved one problem, deferring to other tiny packages for anything non-core. I remember colleagues more embedded in the JS world than I was passionately arguing for this in 2012/13. And it did make some sense: bandwidth matters, particularly on mobile devices (which became a key source of traffic during that period) so why pull in some gigantic do everything library when you only need a handful of functions[0]? Sure, minifying and pruning help but, due to JS's nature, pruning can only get you so far. But, yes, I think leftpad was something of a teaching moment on the downsides of this approach. [0] Of course, if you then stick 6 different tracking scripts in all your pages, it's super-easy to undo all the good you've done by minimising your bundle size, but that's a different conversation.
nkrisc 1y ago
What’s anti-social is unilaterally making your code dependent on someone’s package and then getting mad at them when they choose to remove it. This whole problem was trivially avoidable, and people get mad at him because they were too lazy to avoid it.
- bartread 1y ago
  They weren't too lazy to avoid it. Depending on other peoples' packages was actively encouraged within the JS community during that period, and the perceived benefits of doing so were loudly trumpeted.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    And if you did without due diligence of the downsides, you have only yourself to blame. Lots of people made a big mistake, they found out the hard way. Lesson learned.
bayindirh 1y ago
Personally I understand both Al-Ghazali and "Not driven by logic, anger" parts very well. I have been in that position as well. Being neutral and seeing a good way forward is not something practiced, taught or celebrated in western, esp. American culture much. One always needs to have a thrust source (mostly an emotion driven by logic, taught during being grown up (e.g.: You should be angry about it)) to make decisions. In fact, sometimes, you just don't have a thrust source, you just feel like doing it. It feels the right thing to do, and you do it with no emotions attached. This is a boon, in fact it's called "clarity" brought by being with yourself. Either spending time outdoors, doing some reflection work, or by meditating. I use the same methods when I face with a non-urgent but important decision. Let the way reveal itself. Putting logic and emotions aside and finding the right way is not easy, or the process is not smooth sailing, but I never arrived to a wrong place by following that path.

toledocavani 1y ago

Who is al-Ghazali? I searched and found the Iraqi phisolopher, but couldn't understand how he is related

tkiolp4 1y ago
We westerns do the know much about the Socrates from the eastern side of the world. I can only imagine people from there know who al-Ghazali was just like we know who Sartre was. So, im gonna try and read something by al-Ghazali.
- akoculu 1y ago
  Let me explain myself on this; When this happened, people started making assumptions. A few of them: 1. I’m irrational 2. I’m angry 3. I’m greedy They came to one of these conclusions, based on how they see themselves in the same position. I can be of course one of these three in some other situations, but in the left pad incident, I done all purely with my heart, to stick to my values and principles which was behind my motivation to do open source for such a long time. Ghazali is the best source I’m aware of about how to put heart in the driver seat of life, and without fighting but using logic, greed, anger etc as tools. If my reference made curious about him, I couldn’t be more happy. Here’s a great lecture about his book, The Alchemy of Happiness: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWc0DflRQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWc0DflRQ
  - hermannj314 1y ago
    I bought the Alchemy of Happiness because of that sentence in your post. I always pay attention when someone recommends an author so earnestly.
    - akoculu 1y ago
      so happy to hear this! I hope you enjoy the reading. Also, feel free to check out the 4 hours long audio lecture on the book. It's really good!
  - 1y ago

akoculu 1y ago

When was the last time you were threatened (“we’ll will bang on your door and take down your accounts”) by a company like Kik and you defended the principles and values you believed until the end? I’m quite familiar with both western and eastern traditions, don’t know any better source than Ghazali’s “the alchemy of happiness” about how people make decisions. It’s kind of ironic to see people being triggered by just the mention of it though — just reflects what your heart tends to reject impulsively. I wish you curiosity. P.S Here’s the full quote, it entertainingly describes the ignorance here: “first, they didn't look at the dates of the emails. They don't understand the timeline. second, they can't relate to standing your ground in a high pressure situation involving threats. and third, they haven't read Al-Ghazali yet, don't quite understand how (free) people make decisions”

nindalf 1y ago
[flagged]
- akoculu 1y ago
  And surely you read Ghazali and know what you’re talking about.
- overbytecode 1y ago
  Why does it make him sound like a wanker? That’s a very uncharitable reading for no particular reason.
  - nindalf 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      Let's consider an example about a tangible phenomena: Gaussian Integration, Quantum Entanglement, Crystalline Structure Formation in Alloyed Metals with Heat Treatment, Combustion Dynamics in a Gasoline Engine, etc. Let's put the same sentence: "I'd love to explain to you, but if you haven't read $SOURCE_MATERIAL, you wouldn't understand it anyway". Does it sound pompous and insufferable?

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

aa-jv 1y ago

>(definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post) What compels you to say this? Would you be more satisfied if he'd suggested the reader acquaint themselves with Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo? Are you familiar with al-Ghazali, the scholar, or is he new to you? You have, rather literally, proven the philosophers point - while remaining, it seems, ignorant of it. Or perhaps, you mean to imply that /u/akoculu was doing a good deed not because he cared, but to show off? The irony is, al-Ghazali asked his readers to question their pomp and self-importance, and to do good deeds because they truly cared, not because it would result in social acknowledgement by the mass collective, whose motives should always be questioned, effectively. Perhaps, then, your position is more of a reflection of your own condition? One would hope your disdain is borne on an actual understanding of al-Ghazali's position, vis a vis self-doubt ... or rather, one would hope your current position is based on an ignorance of his works, actually. One should never feel so compelled to deny the enlightenment of others, especially if by doing so, you resort to personally-motivated obscurantism in response.

dang 1y ago

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Edit out swipes." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44245579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44245579.