First time I consider using the "flag" thing on HN. The piece is disingenuous through and through, in my opinion.
The last line sums it all:
> It is not difficult to have nice shit on the Internet, nor is it difficult to ensure such shit respects the privacy and preferences for media to use of the user. Based on how much time has been wasted on making incremental changes to minimalist protocols, complaining about them, and then implementing arbitrary sets of them, it looks very easy in comparison to make a convenient meta-media to achieve our goals.
Then I would say, stop bashing Gemini which doesn't have that much momentum anyway, and then start building your "maximalist" meta-media thing. Good luck, because in order to get any momentum you have to beat Google or Facebook at their own game, without doing the questionable things like tracking your users in order to pay hundreds of developers.
This makes the top 10 of the worst posts I've seen on HN...
>For example, the Gemini protocol is supposed to provide high "power to weight" and many claim that reducing everything to text makes for a better reading experience; but in reality it has created large codebases, many in the one to ten thousand lines of code range, and can be quantifiably observed to make expression incredibly difficult. As well as lacking any basis in program design, computing minimalism can only fake any basis in any ecological concerns or any ecology movement.
Sorry? For one, "program design" is a loose term, which from a hard science perspective means absolutely squat. So "lacking in basis in program design" means nothing, while insinuating that this is some "ad-hoc" thing. But it would be ad-hoc as opposed to what?
What "basis in program design" have crufty protocols like SOAP or the modern web, that a purposefully small protocol lacks?
I don't even know what "basis in program design" means (and the author doesn't either). But I know that computing minimalism, even if it's not formally defined, has some specific targets and design concerns, which its adherents identify with (e.g. the UNIX philosophy, KISS, Worse is Better, and so on).
Second, Gemini failed to be small, because it result in "large codebases, many in the one to ten thousand lines of code range", really?
Compared to a modern browser or anything similar, those are microscopic. If that's what Gemini resulted it, it's a resounding success from that aspect.
>can be quantifiably observed to make expression incredibly difficult
The last line sums it all:
> It is not difficult to have nice shit on the Internet, nor is it difficult to ensure such shit respects the privacy and preferences for media to use of the user. Based on how much time has been wasted on making incremental changes to minimalist protocols, complaining about them, and then implementing arbitrary sets of them, it looks very easy in comparison to make a convenient meta-media to achieve our goals.
Then I would say, stop bashing Gemini which doesn't have that much momentum anyway, and then start building your "maximalist" meta-media thing. Good luck, because in order to get any momentum you have to beat Google or Facebook at their own game, without doing the questionable things like tracking your users in order to pay hundreds of developers.