Antirez, amen brorher.

2025-02-09 · 1 year ago · 👍 mediocregopher

5 Comments ↓

👻 ps · 2025-02-09 at 01:07:

Everything there looks conservatively depressing, and I feel depressed as well.

There is nothing perfect in this world, not even the critics.

🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2025-02-09 at 03:51:

The last one really rang true. Computers are thousands of times more powerful than when I started, but coding is more like filling out a tax return.

🐝 undefined · 2025-02-09 at 11:18:

Kinda feels like if you asked an LLM to write a 'software sucks rant', that's what it'd come up with. If you just skim it without reading, it feels about right. But then if you start poking, it's a lot more questionable. Most of it is really case-by-case kind of thing, like the bit about comments, or about dependencies, or standards. 'Simple things should be simple' is a nice slogan in the abstract, but when it comes to concrete situations just not really applicable. Not wrong necessarily, just too vague. This bit too:

We are destroying software mistaking it for a purely engineering discipline.

Okay, so what should it be? Like math, so more abstract? Like games, so more fun?

Like sports, so striving for excellence and competitive? Those are all different, non-compatible directions.

We are destroying software, and what will be left will no longer give us the joy of hacking

I mean maybe, but this piece doesn't present a good reason for it.

🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2025-02-09 at 12:47:

@HanzBrix, not really. Instead of bolting together libraries, usually you could write a few lines of code that does what needs to be done. Chuck Moore had a lot to say about never using or writing libraries. You also get sucked into using someone else's ideas and data layout, which may completely alter how you do things. And in the end, not understanding the lower levels leads to bad software.

Worse yet are frameworks, where you cannot understand lower _and_ higher levels.

@undefined -- it's an art, and quickly becoming a lost art. Engineering is sometimes required, but getting a feel for the code is different. Good code writes itself, with you as a conduit.

As a musician, I enjoy making music in a way that's hard to describe. It takes a lot of skill and repetition as well as understanding theory, but in the end it is an art. Replacing an artist with a tape deck just not the same, except for those who cannot hear or appreciate subtlety of expression.

🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2025-02-09 at 16:28:

Well, you can not expect every corporate database to be a work of art, so yes, it's a spectrum.

We use paint to spray sides of buildings, and to make portraits. A painter can mean either, but somehow it is more confusing here.