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Saying boilerplate shouldn’t exist is like saying we shouldn’t need nails or screws if we just designed furniture to be cut perfectly as one piece from the tree
by jama211 1y ago
Saying boilerplate shouldn’t exist is like saying we shouldn’t need nails or screws if we just designed furniture to be cut perfectly as one piece from the tree. The response is “I mean, sure, that’d be great, not sure how you’ll actually accomplish that though”.
- okr 1y agoLove this analogy.
- philjackson 1y agoGreat analogy. We've attempted to produce these systems and every time what emerges is software which makes easy things easy and hard things impossible.
- jampekka 1y agoSaying boilerplate should exist is like saying every nail should have its own hammer. Some amount of boilerplate probably needs to exist, but in general it would be better off minimized. For a decade or so there's sadly been a trend of deliberately increasing it.
- kazinator 1y agoRather, it is boilerplate that replicates hammers along with nails.
- coldtea 1y ago>Saying boilerplate should exist is like saying every nail should have its own hammer It's rather saying that we should have parts that join without nailing by now, especially for things we do again and again and again and again.
- jama211 1y agoDid you read shouldn’t when they wrote should?
- jama211 1y agoI didn’t say it should exist, only implied it’s a practical inevitability for the moment.
- jonstewart 1y agoCarpenters/framers are less skilled and paid less than cabinetmakers. But the world needs more carpenters.
- j45 1y agoThe value is where the demand is, or where the market values it and not just in a skill of working with wood with tools to create nearly anything.
- namibj 1y agoWhile it sounds likely true for the US, it's the opposite in Germany: likely due to societal expectations on "creature comforts" and German homes not being framed with 2x4's but instead getting guild-approved craftsmen to construct a roof for a brick building (with often precast concrete slabs forming the intermediate floors; they're segmented along the non-bridging direction to be less customized).
- Ygg2 1y agoYou can design furniture without nails or screws. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_carpentry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_carpentry Reason Japanese carpenters do or did that is that sea air + high humidity would absolutely rot anything with nail and screw. No furniture is really designed from a single tree, though. They aren't massive enough. I agree with overall sentiment. But the analogy is higly flawed. You can't compare physical things with software. Physical things are way more constrained while software is super abstract.
- oldsecondhand 1y ago> Reason Japanese carpenters do or did that is that sea air + high humidity would absolutely rot anything with nail and screw. The other reason was that iron was very expensive in Japan as they had only low quality iron ore.
- jama211 1y agoI can and will compare them, analogies don’t need to be perfect so long as they get a point across. That’s why they’re analogies, not direct perfect comparisons. I very much enjoy the Japanese carpentry styles that exist though, off topic but very cool.
- philsnow 1y agoEven Star Trek has self-sealing stem bolts, they don't just 3d print their ships
- joombaga 1y agoThey do sometimes 3D print at least smaller ships by the 2380s.
- mejutoco 1y agoThere are construction systems, for example in Japanese traditional architecture, that use no nails or screws. Good joinery often removes their need.
- kazinator 1y agoSince we invented the tree and control its parameters and features, this is actually correct.
- jama211 1y agoWe’re limited by the limits of our invention though. We can’t set the parameters and features to whatever we want, or we’d set them to “infinitely powerful” and “infinitely simple” - it doesn’t work like that however.
- kazinator 1y agoThose parameters of the invention that limit people from just doing away with boilerplate are ones they won't change, not can't.
- jama211 1y agoWell, depending on the value proposition, or the required goals, that’s not necessarily true. There are pros and cons to different approaches, and pretending there aren’t downsides to such a switch is problematic.
- coldtea 1y agoI can tell you about 1000 ways, the problem is there are no corporate monetary incentives to follow them, and not much late-90s-era FOSS ethos going around either...
- jama211 1y agoBy that, you must admit that at least in a sense you imply they’re not cost effective, or practical.
- abathologist 1y agoThis is a terribly confused analogy, afaict. But maybe if you could explain in what sense boilerplate, as defined in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_text, is anything like a nail, it could be less confusing.