3 ms·
> What baffles me is that so many people treat that friction—the effort of working around a tool’s limitations—as the “fun” part, and then advertise it as evide
by leecommamichael 3mo ago
> What baffles me is that so many people treat that friction—the effort of working around a tool’s limitations—as the “fun” part, and then advertise it as evidence that the tool is great.
I'm confused by this because I simultaneously agree with Bill by the examples given in the article; things like "ricing" Linux and Vim, but I also advertise Odin as being great due to this friction which may be seen as a limitation.
My favorite example is Odin's approach to metaprogramming and compile-time features. Odin is featureful in this regard, but not nearly to the extent that other languages are (D, Zig, Nim, C++, C) and it may have been the deciding reason I've written far more Odin than any of those other languages.
I _can't_ just do whatever I want at compile-time in Odin. That's a blessing for people like me. I toy with the compiler. I admire languages and language design, and toying with them, learning all of the features, is an expression of that interest. For Odin, there really aren't many novel features for you to toy with. It's just not a toy at all. I don't mean "toy" in then derogatory sense, or to designate others as such. I simply mean that Odin is just not fun to fiddle with, you use it to do something.