5 ms·

Somewhat meta, but why are so many stories on HN "<existing product> written in <different language>", and not "<existing product> with <interesting new idea>"?

• lynchdt 13y ago
  It would be a great way of learning Scala.
  • hrjet 13y ago
    OP here. This is one of the reasons to mention Scala in the title. Not just Scala, but also an opportunity to learn frameworks like Scalatra. I was actually evaluating different Scala frameworks and stumbled upon this project as well as another neat one: https://github.com/ornicar/lila https://github.com/ornicar/lila
    • cefstat 13y ago
      Although I understand your motivation, when I see "clone of X in language Y" I think that this is something being hyped only because of the choice of language and not because of the project's actual merits. In the case of GitBucket the most important advantage is its easy installation, especially when compared to the more well known GitLab (that I never dared install after reading through the installation instructions).
  • hansgru 13y ago
    > It would be a great way of learning Scala. For me it is :). I started to learn Scala after finding this nice project. Since it was so easy to install it (just copied the WAR file in a running Tomcat) it made me curious enough to give Scala a try and also to buy the Scalatra book too :).
• wtetzner 13y ago
  From my very brief look at GitBucket, at least one thing jumps out at me: ease of install. Just drop one .war file in a directory and go.
  • rrouse 13y ago
    You can do that with JRuby as well. I believe that's what you get with Github Enterprise. But yeah, anytime we have ease of install, we all win.
    • kev009 13y ago
      GitHub enterprise comes only as a VM now. Every release for the past year has had upgrade problems or significant bugs. It's amateur hour compared to the public version.
      • rrouse 13y ago
        Oh that's a real shame. They charge so much for it too.
• andyroid 13y ago
  If they're trying to attract users you are certainly right. But if they're trying to attract developers/contributors (which seems plausible for a new project), language choice certainly matters.
• amazari 13y ago
  I guess the major advantage of this solution over github is its source availability under a FOSS license (Apache). The story's title might indeed be more informative by stating that instead of focusing on the implementation language.
• m0th87 13y ago
  Because most of us are developers, the medium of a software product is considered interesting as well as the finished product. This should hardly be surprising and I'm glad there's a forum whose interests span beyond an ends-justify-the-means approach to software.
  • Shish2k 13y ago
    > the medium of a software product is considered interesting as well as the finished product I get that, and I find things like the demoscene interesting where the medium is a large part of the value -- but in this case (and most cases when stories like this are posted) it seems like a serious business product, where the medium is an implementation detail - the value is in other things like "open source" and "easy to install"
    • SkyMarshal 13y ago
      For anyone who's tried to setup and run Gitorious, an "easily installable" version of anything like it (eg a Github clone) is particularly attractive. As mentioned, when I see "written in Scala", the implication is you ./sbt package it into a WAR, then stick it in a standard servlet container, and voila, up and running. In Gitbucket's case you don't even have to package it, just download the war. So for a bunch of coders who may want to run a repo service on their internal network, employer or client's network, this is an interesting option. Also it's FOSS, which I upvote by default here, be it from Mozilla or a random hobbyist. PS - Not to bag on Gitorious, great FOSS project and much improved install as of late.
• levosmetalo 13y ago
  In this case, "written in Scala" is already interesting new idea. By the fact it's written in Scala, I already know that it can be run on standard JVM application server stack, that it will need less resources than your standard Ruby implementation and be much more performant and cheaper to maintain if installed locally.
• lmm 13y ago
  Many stories are submitted, but the ones in that form seem to get upvoted more, I suspect because fans of that particular language upvote them (certainly the go ones seem to get a disproportionate boost).
• malandrew 13y ago
  Advertising the language is valuable if you speak that language. It's a large codebase for a complete product that you might want to peruse to learn something about how a large project in that language could be built.
• TheSmoke 13y ago
  as a developer, i don't need them to be different than each other as they are mostly open source so i can take a good look at what they have done, how they've done it and many other things. i'd like to think such applications as showcase apps for the languages as a prospective user, having this web application up and running somewhere and showing it would be much more compelling to me.