The negativity is disappointing. Anyone who shows interest in development, even those that don't code, should be encouraged as we wish to be encouraged. When we see products launched here on HN they are sometimes developed by other people than the heads of those companies. Do you attack them as well? A familiar one would be Digg. If someone had an idea for an autism app but not the skill and paid for its development would you be negative about it as well?
Yes I'm ranting, the older discussion linked herein was really ugly.
You do know what kind of negative things Mr. Rumsfeld is guilty of, right? I do not think one could be blamed for feeling _ashamed_ that such a horrific man has entered the field with which those of us here are all so deeply engaged.
But what do the two have to do with each other? It's one thing if the guy is brushing elbows with you in the office every day, but this is nothing like that. He took an interest in the field and tried his hand. His past actions are irrelevant in this aspect.
Apparently to many of us here his past action are not irrelevant. It's an interesting discussion as to why this may or may not be the case, but it's clearly not a given.
I would blame no one for being ashamed of someone they don't like claiming a the same identity as themselves. I'm not immune from that feeling and I don't like to be set into a group I don't agree with based on a passion we both share. In that way I try not to group people for blame by their passion and I don't want others to do so for me.
He has developed an app and is in a position of influence. With that I hope the understanding of how our world works may permeate into areas we've been unable to reach yet. When you learn the logic processes of computing I find it quickly becomes applied to other areas of life. The more logic the world has the better I think.
There's nothing horrific about Donald Rumsfeld. He was Secretary of Defense. Was he more horrific than any other Secretary of Defense? War is horrific. So is Leftist bias.
I guarded detainees in Afghanistan for a small stint. I can say with confidence that within the scope of war, there are actions that are more horrific than others.
Having to stare into the face of a man who killed your friend a week ago is mentally taxing. The natural urge to take the butt of my rifle to his chin was nearly over-whelming, but what separates me from horrific people is that in those trying times, I still treated him like a human being.
What does breaking his jaw achieve? My friend is dead. No amount of torture would ever bring him back. All I would get in return is a piece my humanity ripped from my soul as I watched a defenseless man writhe in pain. Congrats, self. Do you feel vindicated?
War damn sure is horrific, but it doesn't have to be barbaric.
For an apparent Objectivist, you have a very poor understanding of Rand's ideas towards intellectual honesty, and her respect for the US Constitution. Rumsfeld made a career out of flagrantly attacking these two virtues. Rand would have foamed at the mouth if she were alive for Rumsfeld's many lies.
You don't have to be a Marxist to know that Donald Rumsfeld is an immoral man and a war criminal, who was directly implicated in the torture of innocent civilians of the United States and other allied nations. You ought to read OPAR and IOE a bit closer, next time. You also may want to read a newspaper that isn't owned by Rupert Murdock.
My dad (edit: now 76) went from a computer illiterate to someone that got completely sold on home automation through a couple of raspberry pi's. He has done lots of python stuff, and recently a bit of F#. The python is spaghetti code, but the F# actually looks better than what my colleagues write :D
I am if anything a critic of Rumsfeld and have called him the most overrated minister (his SID project is just one example of his unrealistic ideas) and it's easy to point fingers at the many damaging decisions he made in the Bush jr. administration. In other word I have nothing good to say about him.
But I have no idea what kind of problematic (and wrong) decisions I would have to do if I was in power and so isolated from that (which I have no problem with) this is just a fantastic and wonderful thing to read. I wish more of the older generation would enrich us with games, apps and other perspectives to counter what seems to be a very youth centric avalanche of location based dating apps and other young generation issues.
So props to Rumsfeld for never feeling too old to try new stuff.
If the author of this article were "Bob Smith", the HN readership reaction would be tepid at worst. Instead, everybody has brought political baggage to this discussion.
History will fairly judge Rumsfeld long after he (and most of us) are dead, and not on his app-creation career. That his new venture into a technical field can't be objectively judged (without involving his unrelated past) on a technical site is sad.
Agreed. I skipped over the author portion of the header because I was fixated on how good the game looked visually.
Reading through the description, I had intended to come back to HN and comment on how rich and contextual the game's introduction was. That Medium post was a story, with actual history and soul, and I was amazed by it from start to finish.
I was busy marveling at how great that introduction was, and wondered whether or not it was a generational thing, that we get 140-character introductions for most products today... Then I came here, scanned to see if there was a comment enough like the one I intended that I didn't need to post, and found the comments you mentioned.
So, to me, it looks like a great game, and without actually getting the app, the execution looks solid as well. It sounds like there was quite a bit of iteration on the project, and if he paid a team to build it, I don't know if it will reach profitability ever, but kudos to the man who, at 84, decides that there must be an app badly enough that he takes it upon himself to see it being built... whomever he happens to be.
The article itself is also slathered with political paint and narrative. IMO, if you consider the comments to this article off-topic, I believe the article itself is as well.
I'm not sure you can get credit for being involved if your involvement is looking at what others are doing and saying "Ok" - input that only matters because he's paying for it, not because he has any idea that it's actually good or correct. I don't mean to be negative because it's obviously good he's attempting it, and I encourage that, but let's be honest as to what's actually happening.
It amazes me that a professional PR company (obviously this was not written by Rumsfeld himself) approved the idea of posting on Medium where there is no full control of comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964902