Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

And everybody takes inspiration for everything from somebody else and it can all be traced back to ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome. Yes we get it, nothing is an original idea.

Thought experiment: To be truly "original" a child that grew up with wolves in the jungle would have to come up with it (okay, not even that since it learns from the wolves). Everything else is "not truly original". Duh.

Now that we have established that no truly "original" ideas exist in any human's head (assuming "original" means going from totally empty, nothingness, to the idea), can we just get rid of all comments pointing out that X didn't really invent Y but was inspired by P?

Of course, what I just wrote isn't original in the slightest, I just don't know the names of all the people who said it before.



Well, no, Scala took inspiration from various languages of decades past and combined them together into an modern OO/FP hybrid.

Kotlin copied Scala directly, renaming `def` to `fun`, `case` to `data` and so on. There's a big difference between creating and copying.

Anyway, in hindsight it was a great idea to cherry pick from Scala as the language seems poised for much bigger things (i.e. potentially becoming a mainstream language).




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: