
I don't care why you won't write for iPhone/Android/PHP/Rails/Mac - _pius
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/3d2aaf7da4e2a82cd2c3afd0085a9643e7acbe5f/dumping_ground/nobody_cares.md
======
MicahWedemeyer
_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"

~~~
daleharvey
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
> 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
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.

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raganwald
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_g...](http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_ground#readme)

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
What was the point of putting it online if you didn't mean for anyone to read
it?

~~~
raganwald
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!

~~~
Hexstream
I think you should make it way more obvious than this is "unpublished". Even
after reading you saying it here, looking back at the page it took me _several
seconds_ to notice "homoiconic / dumping_ground / nobody_cares.md", which is
the only clue that this isn't meant for general circulation.

You can't expect thousands of potential visitors automagically guessing the
context of a post.

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johnbender
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
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"

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

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stse
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.

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DougBTX
I like your writing style raganwald.

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cgs
Upmodded for _coital conglomeration_.

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

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ajkirwin
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.

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

