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Pro Tip: if I have to dig through eight paragraphs of fluff to find out what the fuck your product is, then you REALLY need to rethink the description of your p

Pro Tip: if I have to dig through eight paragraphs of fluff to find out what the fuck your product is, then you REALLY need to rethink the description of your product. In particular, it was not at all clear what was meant by a "programming platform". Until I finally stumbled onto the description below, I thought it was just another web-based IDE. > What is the Unison platform? At a high level, it consists of three components: > * The Unison language: a powerful, typed, purely functional underlying programming language > * The Unison editor: a rich, in-browser semantic editor for editing programs > * The Unison node: the backend implementation of the Unison language, its typechecker, and the API used by the Unison editor and other remote nodes in the network > The collection of Unison nodes (the Unison web) form a network platform in which data and functions may be trivially exchanged, with a minimum of friction.

jackmaney 11y ago
As with many things in life, there's also a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- banebot 11y ago
  This was the first thing that came to mind about a paragraph into reading
- woah 11y ago
  There should be an xkcd about people overusing that xkcd in every possible context
- geon 11y ago
  I don't see how that is relevant. The author's complaint isn't that there are too many languages, but that none of them are good enough.
mtrimpe 11y ago
If I understand it correctly it's like Typed Racket with a purely functional AST which is also a content-addressable Merkle-tree and a UI with paredit-style type correctness.
- vinodkd 11y ago
  this was strangely entirely grokkable, thanks.
irickt 11y ago
The author posted a followup to counter the impressions of vaporware: http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/update.html http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/update.html
- EricSu 11y ago
  ....which is also 8 paragraphs of fluff and trying to connect with the audience
  - teacup50 11y ago
    I understand clearly what it is; perhaps it's only fluff to you because it's aimed higher than your technical reading level?
    - EricSu 11y ago
      Please tell me how things like "I am kind of kicking myself for making what ended up being a bad tech choice..." and "gak!" are directly informative of the point of the article? This article needs to take a tl;dr approach and cut down the statements that could be stated in one sentence. Maybe other people might want to know this guy's thought process behind everything, but I'm much more engaged with the cold facts. 1-2 months to research Elm and transition the Unison editor? Okay that's all I need to know. Realistically you would probably only be able to work part-time because you are a paid consultant? Okay cool that's self explanatory, you need to make money and we get that. This article is informative, but it could've been edited to a maximum word count. P.S. Thanks for being mature. I willingly admit that I'm young and I have a lot to learn, but I do happen to know terms like HTTP+JSON and why a one-file-per-hash system is an insanely inefficient implementation.
davedx 11y ago
Pro tips: * Be courteous when offering constructive criticism (that means, for example, don't swear at people) * Often it's not the project owners posting things on HN - many projects aren't necessarily ready for public consumption when they end up on here * This doesn't even appear to be a "product". It's an open source project that seems to have been recently put out there Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK.
- jackmaney 11y ago
  > * Be courteous when offering constructive criticism (that means, for example, don't swear at people) This may shock you, but the internet wasn't fucking built for five year olds. > * Often it's not the project owners posting things on HN - many projects aren't necessarily ready for public consumption when they end up on here That doesn't mean that they aren't open to constructive criticism. > * This doesn't even appear to be a "product". It's an open source project that seems to have been recently put out there Fine. s/product/project/. Better? > Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK. Language!
- dalek_cannes 11y ago
  Agreed. It's disturbing that there are so many members who are seemingly intelligent, but either haven't read the guidelines or think that guidelines don't apply to them.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- benihana 11y ago
  >Hacker News, you SUCK. Very constructive and courteous.
- dang 11y ago
  > Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK. Your other points are right (I winced at that "what the fuck your product is", and I bet most readers did), but this one isn't. Acerbic dismissals are a problem on HN, but they're far from "absolutely typical". The trouble with that false generalization is that it conditions us to see the community the wrong way. Repeat too often that a town doesn't care about litter, and more people will be careless with their trash. But users here do care. It's better to view this systemically, as a tragedy-of-the-commons problem that we all need to work on, than to make a big blaming judgment as if it were easy for things to be better. They should indeed be better—but it's not that easy. What is easy is to see it as everybody else's problem ("Hacker News, you suck"). In reality, anybody commenting on Hacker News is part of it, so we're talking about ourselves.
callum85 11y ago
This isn't a 'Show HN'.

jackmaney 11y ago

As with many things in life, there's also a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

banebot 11y ago
This was the first thing that came to mind about a paragraph into reading
woah 11y ago
There should be an xkcd about people overusing that xkcd in every possible context
geon 11y ago
I don't see how that is relevant. The author's complaint isn't that there are too many languages, but that none of them are good enough.

mtrimpe 11y ago

If I understand it correctly it's like Typed Racket with a purely functional AST which is also a content-addressable Merkle-tree and a UI with paredit-style type correctness.

vinodkd 11y ago
this was strangely entirely grokkable, thanks.

irickt 11y ago

The author posted a followup to counter the impressions of vaporware: http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/update.html http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/update.html

EricSu 11y ago
....which is also 8 paragraphs of fluff and trying to connect with the audience
- teacup50 11y ago
  I understand clearly what it is; perhaps it's only fluff to you because it's aimed higher than your technical reading level?
  - EricSu 11y ago
    Please tell me how things like "I am kind of kicking myself for making what ended up being a bad tech choice..." and "gak!" are directly informative of the point of the article? This article needs to take a tl;dr approach and cut down the statements that could be stated in one sentence. Maybe other people might want to know this guy's thought process behind everything, but I'm much more engaged with the cold facts. 1-2 months to research Elm and transition the Unison editor? Okay that's all I need to know. Realistically you would probably only be able to work part-time because you are a paid consultant? Okay cool that's self explanatory, you need to make money and we get that. This article is informative, but it could've been edited to a maximum word count. P.S. Thanks for being mature. I willingly admit that I'm young and I have a lot to learn, but I do happen to know terms like HTTP+JSON and why a one-file-per-hash system is an insanely inefficient implementation.

davedx 11y ago

Pro tips: * Be courteous when offering constructive criticism (that means, for example, don't swear at people) * Often it's not the project owners posting things on HN - many projects aren't necessarily ready for public consumption when they end up on here * This doesn't even appear to be a "product". It's an open source project that seems to have been recently put out there Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK.

jackmaney 11y ago
> * Be courteous when offering constructive criticism (that means, for example, don't swear at people) This may shock you, but the internet wasn't fucking built for five year olds. > * Often it's not the project owners posting things on HN - many projects aren't necessarily ready for public consumption when they end up on here That doesn't mean that they aren't open to constructive criticism. > * This doesn't even appear to be a "product". It's an open source project that seems to have been recently put out there Fine. s/product/project/. Better? > Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK. Language!
dalek_cannes 11y ago
Agreed. It's disturbing that there are so many members who are seemingly intelligent, but either haven't read the guidelines or think that guidelines don't apply to them.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
benihana 11y ago
>Hacker News, you SUCK. Very constructive and courteous.
dang 11y ago
> Absolutely typical that this is the top rated comment. Hacker News, you SUCK. Your other points are right (I winced at that "what the fuck your product is", and I bet most readers did), but this one isn't. Acerbic dismissals are a problem on HN, but they're far from "absolutely typical". The trouble with that false generalization is that it conditions us to see the community the wrong way. Repeat too often that a town doesn't care about litter, and more people will be careless with their trash. But users here do care. It's better to view this systemically, as a tragedy-of-the-commons problem that we all need to work on, than to make a big blaming judgment as if it were easy for things to be better. They should indeed be better—but it's not that easy. What is easy is to see it as everybody else's problem ("Hacker News, you suck"). In reality, anybody commenting on Hacker News is part of it, so we're talking about ourselves.

callum85 11y ago

This isn't a 'Show HN'.