5 ms·

I don't care why you won't write for iPhone/Android/PHP/Rails/Mac

103 points by _pius 17y ago

erlanger 17y ago
Better to assume good intent and not open your mouth...what a maniac.
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
The fact is, everyone already knows what the pertinent issues surrounding platform and tool choice are. I wholeheartedly disagree. Every day I read a blog post about some nefarious aspect of an api/platform/company that I had never considered. For example, I'm glad people are exposing the inequalities of the app store. Without true stories from the inside, all we'd have to rely on are the media fluff pieces of "I rolled out of bed, hacked this little app, and became an insta-millionaire"
- tjogin 17y ago
  Certainly. For instance, how is App Store going to get better if nobody whines about its deficiencies? Criticizing the thing you care about is essential to its improvement. Secondly, telling people to shut up and stop complaining is a very odd thing to do, not only because the very act of doing so is contradictory, but also because instead of everybody else shutting up, how about just stop reading? Isn't that so much easier, for everybody involved?
- daleharvey 17y ago
  I agree, and while there is a of of redundancy across these blog posts, the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is. please carry on telling us why you are/arent using the language / platform / tools you do/dont.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    > the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is. While I upmodded your comment, I disagree with this. There are a lot of problems with using social media as a metric for anything. For one thing, it suffers from information cascades. The presence of articles on a subject encourages others to write articles on the same subject and there is teh appearance of a snowball effect. But there may be absolutely no change in what people are doing, just a change in what people are discussing.
    - daleharvey 17y ago
      is definitely a fuzzy metric, I didnt mean that people should sit and count all the pro vs con posts, but the cascade works on both sides, everyone is talking about the iphone right now, if a bunch of people werent criticizing it I would see one article explaining the cons and 50 talking about how awesome it it.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  The first few articles pointing out problems are fine. Useful, even. The (sys.maxint+1)th "me too" variation of it? Not so much.
johnbender 17y ago
In general I agree with the "stop opining, and start hacking" mantra. Though, writing and opinion piece about it sort of defeats the purpose :P
- cschep 17y ago
  Exactly, the next post in line is going to be: "I don't care that you don't care why I don't write software for $HOTPLATFORM"
ajkirwin 17y ago
This person seems to be on some kind of.. crusade, insisting that everything you write be relevant for years, be somehow enthralling.. infact, his very post is the kinda of throwaway that he seems to rail against.
raganwald 17y ago
I am the author, and this is not one of my posts. It's something I wrote and put in my dumping ground. That's kind of like a trash can on OS X. I never posted it here and it never showed up in the RSS feed. As the read me for the folder says... If you're just snooping around, have fun. Nothing in this folder is meant to be a permanent addition, it's just a handy place for me to dump stuff that doesn't have a home yet. http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_ground#readme http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_g... It reflects how I felt at the time but it doesn't reflect what I wanted to post, so I left it unpublished. I didn't try very hard to hide it or anything. But it is an "unauthorizd" post and should not be construed as overt advice to anyone. p.s. Even though this is an unauthorized post, I am upmodding anyone who criticizes it. They are my feelings, so it's perfectly valid to disagree publicly.
- tjogin 17y ago
  What was the point of putting it online if you didn't mean for anyone to read it?
  - unalone 17y ago
    Storage? Ease of access? There're a lot of advantages the Internet brings you even when you're not trying to whore for attention.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    I think you misunderstand. I'm fine with people reading my unfinished, half-baked ideas, but that is not the same thing as publishing them or claiming they are finished. I have a directory structure on my hard drive. The "dumping ground" is like a folder of drafts. Have a look, there's all kinds of unfinished and half-baked ideas in there. I publish it to git I have no problem with people reading it. It's just as if you came by my house and looked at my pond while I was building it. It isn't a secret that I was working on it. However, allowing people to read my half-baked stuff is not the same thing as publishing them. Whoever posted this actively went there and linked to it. This is very different from when I actively publish a post in my RSS feed, or tweet it, or whatever. The point being, is this my opinion? Yes. Do I have a problem with you reading my opinion? No. Am I forcing my opinion on other people by publishing it? Also no. FWIW, my opinion is that HN was clogged with posts about iPhone development, and that I didn't want to meta-clog it with posts about posts. So I wrote this to get the idea off my chest and left it alone. Besides, I was too busy writing code to polish those few paragraphs up and turn them into an essay!
mrkurt 17y ago
You may not care, but Apple (and the other platform creators) should.
TweedHeads 17y ago
There is real opinion against a tool/platform and there is FUD, payperpost and propaganda disguised as an innocent blog post. In this days of information overflow we need to learn how to differentiate both. It is really easy to create fake blogs, and easier yet to pay pseudo-journalists to publish your propaganda for a few bucks.
DougBTX 17y ago
I like your writing style raganwald.
uniwiz 17y ago
news.yc would not exist if people followed advice from this guy :-)
cgs 17y ago
Upmodded for coital conglomeration.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
stse 17y ago
I agree somewhat with the point he's making. While entertaining, these types of blog posts adds little value to the choice of platform. Things like available resources, customer base and running costs are more important than if it's pretty. Start your own company, not an application provider for/with platform X. A lot of companies fail anyway, and many who succeed end up doing something else than they thought they would do.

103 points by _pius 17y ago

Better to assume good intent and not open your mouth...what a maniac.

The fact is, everyone already knows what the pertinent issues surrounding platform and tool choice are. I wholeheartedly disagree. Every day I read a blog post about some nefarious aspect of an api/platform/company that I had never considered. For example, I'm glad people are exposing the inequalities of the app store. Without true stories from the inside, all we'd have to rely on are the media fluff pieces of "I rolled out of bed, hacked this little app, and became an insta-millionaire"

tjogin 17y ago
Certainly. For instance, how is App Store going to get better if nobody whines about its deficiencies? Criticizing the thing you care about is essential to its improvement. Secondly, telling people to shut up and stop complaining is a very odd thing to do, not only because the very act of doing so is contradictory, but also because instead of everybody else shutting up, how about just stop reading? Isn't that so much easier, for everybody involved?
daleharvey 17y ago
I agree, and while there is a of of redundancy across these blog posts, the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is. please carry on telling us why you are/arent using the language / platform / tools you do/dont.
- raganwald 17y ago
  > the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is. While I upmodded your comment, I disagree with this. There are a lot of problems with using social media as a metric for anything. For one thing, it suffers from information cascades. The presence of articles on a subject encourages others to write articles on the same subject and there is teh appearance of a snowball effect. But there may be absolutely no change in what people are doing, just a change in what people are discussing.
  - daleharvey 17y ago
    is definitely a fuzzy metric, I didnt mean that people should sit and count all the pro vs con posts, but the cascade works on both sides, everyone is talking about the iphone right now, if a bunch of people werent criticizing it I would see one article explaining the cons and 50 talking about how awesome it it.
ubernostrum 17y ago
The first few articles pointing out problems are fine. Useful, even. The (sys.maxint+1)th "me too" variation of it? Not so much.

johnbender 17y ago

In general I agree with the "stop opining, and start hacking" mantra. Though, writing and opinion piece about it sort of defeats the purpose :P

cschep 17y ago
Exactly, the next post in line is going to be: "I don't care that you don't care why I don't write software for $HOTPLATFORM"

ajkirwin 17y ago

This person seems to be on some kind of.. crusade, insisting that everything you write be relevant for years, be somehow enthralling.. infact, his very post is the kinda of throwaway that he seems to rail against.

raganwald 17y ago

I am the author, and this is not one of my posts. It's something I wrote and put in my dumping ground. That's kind of like a trash can on OS X. I never posted it here and it never showed up in the RSS feed. As the read me for the folder says... If you're just snooping around, have fun. Nothing in this folder is meant to be a permanent addition, it's just a handy place for me to dump stuff that doesn't have a home yet. http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_ground#readme http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_g... It reflects how I felt at the time but it doesn't reflect what I wanted to post, so I left it unpublished. I didn't try very hard to hide it or anything. But it is an "unauthorizd" post and should not be construed as overt advice to anyone. p.s. Even though this is an unauthorized post, I am upmodding anyone who criticizes it. They are my feelings, so it's perfectly valid to disagree publicly.

tjogin 17y ago
What was the point of putting it online if you didn't mean for anyone to read it?
- unalone 17y ago
  Storage? Ease of access? There're a lot of advantages the Internet brings you even when you're not trying to whore for attention.
- raganwald 17y ago
  I think you misunderstand. I'm fine with people reading my unfinished, half-baked ideas, but that is not the same thing as publishing them or claiming they are finished. I have a directory structure on my hard drive. The "dumping ground" is like a folder of drafts. Have a look, there's all kinds of unfinished and half-baked ideas in there. I publish it to git I have no problem with people reading it. It's just as if you came by my house and looked at my pond while I was building it. It isn't a secret that I was working on it. However, allowing people to read my half-baked stuff is not the same thing as publishing them. Whoever posted this actively went there and linked to it. This is very different from when I actively publish a post in my RSS feed, or tweet it, or whatever. The point being, is this my opinion? Yes. Do I have a problem with you reading my opinion? No. Am I forcing my opinion on other people by publishing it? Also no. FWIW, my opinion is that HN was clogged with posts about iPhone development, and that I didn't want to meta-clog it with posts about posts. So I wrote this to get the idea off my chest and left it alone. Besides, I was too busy writing code to polish those few paragraphs up and turn them into an essay!

mrkurt 17y ago

You may not care, but Apple (and the other platform creators) should.

TweedHeads 17y ago

There is real opinion against a tool/platform and there is FUD, payperpost and propaganda disguised as an innocent blog post. In this days of information overflow we need to learn how to differentiate both. It is really easy to create fake blogs, and easier yet to pay pseudo-journalists to publish your propaganda for a few bucks.

DougBTX 17y ago

I like your writing style raganwald.

uniwiz 17y ago

news.yc would not exist if people followed advice from this guy :-)

cgs 17y ago

Upmodded for coital conglomeration.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

stse 17y ago

I agree somewhat with the point he's making. While entertaining, these types of blog posts adds little value to the choice of platform. Things like available resources, customer base and running costs are more important than if it's pretty. Start your own company, not an application provider for/with platform X. A lot of companies fail anyway, and many who succeed end up doing something else than they thought they would do.