I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product.
Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
Unfortunately those two things often come together, in which the only bit of attention is a single negative comment. Social media sites (forums included) are optimized to reward criticism, no matter how small, instead of positivity.
Supposedly this is because upvotes are intended to replace comments like "Great!" or "I really like this, good job." But obviously that doesn't work out in reality.
I see this on HN frequently. Someone posts their thing and you get some low quality banter about the name choice or hosting provider or whatever, and then the top thread is a big unsubstantiated criticism plus some pilers on. You never really know what to make of it but it feels pretty much the same as if the post was just ignored.
I used to worry about shipping because I thought “you only get one chance to make a good impression.”
But as long as you use negative feedback to improve, you will always[1] get another chance! Statistically speaking, 0% of the world has seen your product.
[1] Obligatory disclaimer that if you really fuck up, you don’t get another chance. But that’s super rare.
Yes, I think if someone cares enough to leave negative feedback, they found it interesting enough to at least try it out, and they're (often) at least invested enough to see if their feedback has any impact or makes a difference. They will look again.
The people who see your thing as useless and don't even try it are the people you never hear from.
I totally agree with negative reception! It means that people give enough of a shit to feel about your product. Which means that with more development - either in product or in market - you’ll find people who love what you made.
Negative feedback is a signal, yet not a guaranteed good. It could also just mean someone stumbled into your product and found it fatally flawed. Sometimes one needs to hear hard things.
Then again when building only for myself all feedback (or lack thereof) is irrelevant!
In interpersonal life, you have more to go on about the source. He or she is obviously an opinionated know-nothing loudmouth. Online, you either have to know the sender, or guess from the community.
StackExchange is especially infested with those, so you can safely assume anyone trashing your idea is one of them. Reddit, too, pretty much. HN has some of those, but not everyone is like that.
I can understand how this conclusion is reached, but I would position that it's less about the specific skill in any given subject and more just about a person's own perception of what is and is not appropriate for interpersonal actions. I know a lot of incredibly smart and gifted people in the programming sphere who are the most gregarious and kind persons you might ever meet, ready to help on just about any problem they're able to -- I've also met the types you're mentioning, and I'm not sure that their way of handling themselves is a requirement or even characteristic for such genius.
Bumping into such personalities when it comes to their subject matter of expertise might be a challenge, sure. They are sure of themselves, direct to a fault, and it takes a lot to get them to reconsider their point of view or even explain it sometimes as they tend to get pretty dogmatic about it. It can be tempting to associate this with their skill level in the subject matter, but I see the same boisterous bravado from the C-levels and VPs when they decide there is something they _must_ opine on without having any knowledge in the domain.
In my experiences, those who just react "screw you guys I'm going home" when challenged aren't quite the superstars they present themselves as; the real superstars are far more open to their ideas being challenged because, in my experience again, they _like_ that sort of challenge. It's not earth shattering for their ego to be corrected, it's a moment of embarrassment, then a moment of appreciation as their mental model adjust and they begin to realize how many axioms they've held based of their previously incorrect logic begin to change/drop away, and they are unburdened by this correction, not harmed.
That is to say, I'm not sure that it's at all related to the skill level or special geniuses, it's just too easy to fall into a perception for oneself of "smart people are always right and when someone challenges them, the only correct path is to assert dominance above all else"; I don't think you need to tie such behavior to any particular industry or skillset, I can guarantee you that this happens in virtually all spheres.
With regards to the article, I think the author maybe has the start of a well developed idea that is marred by trying to associate it with success in the tech world; Steve Jobs may have bucked trends in the industry by going all-in on a nascent technology which ended up making Apple the household name for smartphones; I don't think it was out of any particular inspiration except that "this is coming anyways, and it's gonna make us a shitload of money"; Jobs might have known when he was wrong, but from the stories available, doesn't seem he was often humble about it.
But I would propose don't associate that kind of toxicity with the field; there are a lot of things that encourage such behavior, sure, but I think a lot of this is just the same outdated/ineffective ideas of leadership and decision making that have plagued the world for some time -- it's quite fast to see that this is in just about any community that gets big enough, and it's not exactly a game we _have_ to play, it's just one we continue to play for whatever reason...†
† Addendum: This is not to speak of workplace hierarchies and the ridiculousness that is the structure of a Corporation. From personal experience, such hierarchical power is absolutely a farce, the same in my mind as a pyramid scheme. My reasoning for this is that despite my very fancy title and rapid rise to this title, I know that the title is only useful so long as the person I'm talking with is willing to give it power. My colleagues will absolutely "go over my head" instead of discussing items with me if they don't get the answer they like right away, and our clients will do the same. I think the sooner we can do away with such stringent and pointless hierarchies the better, as it's hard for me to see them as anything but a show to allow the people with real power in such hierarchies to get their way.
> The power in heirarchies, is not the title, but the relationships between 'brothers' inside it.
I would disagree to an extent -- for those in the brotherhood, yes it's about the relationships; for the rest, it's about the title(s). The hierarchy exists as an exclusionary barrier ensuring those outside it respect the hierarchy, while those inside play with the hierarchy of the brotherhood.
From my experiences across many businesses, this is an accurate representation of hierarchy and titles; they are a tool of force against those without the title, except for those who are close with someone else within the hierarchy who is willing to forgo the hierarchy and mission/purpose of the org. It's wildly inconsistent, prone to errors and really bad decision making, and it's quite hard to unravel for virtually anyone who wants another way of doing things.
Businesses and corporations need a heirarchy to withhold knowledge and information from outsiders and 'insiders hungry enough to be dangerous'.
But the natural state for a heirarchy is in an institution, or a military, or a government.
As soon as you make money, your final measure of existence, heirarchy is crippled (to varying degrees) as a concept.
Heirarchy in a business is nearly identical as keeping people 'on a shelf' ready to be deployed onto the storm and stress of work. Businesses heirarchies are flatter, often chaotic and lose rigour and discipline, anytime someone sees financial benefit in bending the rules.
A pure heirachy like something seen on a british navy frigate, or in a religious instution, is a better mental model for the concept. Business needs, flatten out what the ideal concept is capable of producing.
i get what you’re saying, but i don’t see those as true hierarchies either. they suffer the same issues and problems as described above.
the simple idea of implicit authority because of rank or position does not seem to work as soon as there is an incentive to misuse it; i don’t know what the answer is to this but i don’t really subscribe that the majority of the hierarchies matter so much.
the open source model of “just fork it if you don’t agree” isn’t great, but i would say it’s a start. maintainers define the goal and purpose of the project, but if you don’t like the rules, fork and go your separate ways. this is vastly simplified of course, but i think it better represents a model that would be reasonable for a hierarchy.
Most communities have that though; they don't like others having success, they don't like talent/genius in others, they laugh at failure (both by large and small companies) etc. Really one of the best lessons in life (often learned at a higher age) is to give two shits about what anyone thinks about whatever you do.
Just building stuff (fail/success doesn't matter so much) is more than by far most will ever do; they are mostly jealous of people who get anything done at all.
I made a game with a group of well educated friends back in the mid 2000s. It was released (against agreements) when the core gameplay was roughly-in place, but all the art assets were 'programmer art'.
It made the top ten worst Steam Greenlight games (on some dead blog) and attracted huge quantities of negative criticism.
Even though it was never linked to my public reputation and I found it hilarious at the time...
It did make me very hesistant and perfectionist in future projects and took out a certain amount of faith that 'it will work out'.
I learnt a lot from the experience and I'm glad I did it. But gosh I wasted a lot of good juice and youthful exuberance on that.
> It did make me very hesistant and perfectionist in future projects and took out a certain amount of faith that 'it will work out'.
But that's because you still cared about others. And maybe didn't read enough startup/entrepreneur books or know enough people who did that. Once you know what crap companies willingly release which go on to be successful, it will make you far less perfectionist.
I had the luck of having a few family members in computing in the 70s when I was born, so I heard early on about Allen debugging/fixing the basic interpreter he wrote on a PDP for a processor he didn't have access to at the time on the plane for one of the most important meetings of Microsoft at the time. The absolute and total garbage Oracle released for many years when they started. etc. And those are old stories, but this happens all the time; a lot of products that are launched by big or small companies are so full of bugs that I wonder sometimes if anyone bothered to try them.
I simply stopped caring about perfection as it drove me insane and no-one cares anyway. Even, in line with this article, even if I make something ONLY for myself, I rather just finish it and then change it over time then try to get it in a 'perfect state' from the start. It doesn't make me happy as perfection is not really something that's easy to define; especially in software, it is so incredibly hard to get to anything better than 'ok', that striving for perfection (Dijkstra like) will drive you completely bonkers and nothing ever gets released.
This is something I learned being in bands. Fame and fortune weren’t in the story, but because we made the music we wanted to hear, I have an album and 3 EPs worth of music that I can listen to and enjoy, over a decade later.
> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out
This isn’t toxicity. This is normal human behaviour. Either you deal with it yourself internally or you will be suffering it forever.
Maybe this is why childhood trauma helps sometimes at being an entrepreneur (I have first hand experience), being bullied made sure I didn’t really care about negative feedback later on in life.
My point is calling it toxic doesn’t help. It doesn’t help you, because you place your own self worth in someone else’s hands. This is bad. Secondly, you’ll never change this, because it’s normal. People don’t like new things, except for a few exceptions. You have to build something really cool or people won’t care. Society just isn’t some 100% love, accepting place. Sorry. Evolution didn’t make it that way. Society doesn’t have an obligation to you to be nice.
But that’s the whole point of this article too. Just build stuff you enjoy. Who cares what others think? Stop blaming society for your issues.
We need more spaces where young, passionate folks can get some encouragement and support. It can be really hard to find that, especially when you're inexperienced.
This is something college is good for, FWIW. Everyone is expected to be young and inexperienced and it's set up to build experience at a reasonable pace, with supportive external validation.
I always feel like the "school is useless" meme ignores all this stuff.
> Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
Glad you’ve seen the light. Too many fail to recognise that this another type of hacking and painting, but without the backing of venture capital. Pure unadultared freedom. Riskier too.
> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didn't make every perfect decision for their product.
Start through another community then? It is nobody's fault if you can't impress people. But I find people being very welcoming here to bad ideas and half-baked products that are absolutely low quality and soon gets abandoned.
I have that feeling trying to improve dev practices in a shop that had none. Years of effort and we’re barely at the point my previous place was at before I even started there.
Why care? The only reason I point stuff out at my current company is because I don't want to get on a performance improvement plan because of their dumb work forecasting solutions
Caring about your work and work environment can make time spent working a lot more fulfilling. Which isn't to say every company or every manager inspires such sentiment, but if you can find a way to care about your work, and/or find work that you care about, it's definitely more pleasant than just doing the minimum to collect pay.
Nothing is worse then when you care, and apparently all the code written/test/work done 3 months by team goes straight to the trash, no explanation.
Simply some exec in this large thought that it should go to trash, couldn't even give me a reason.
I quickly quit after that.
Believe me, it's far worse when everybody working on it thinks it should go in the trash, but everybody is still working on it because some exec in this large org thinks it still has promise year after year.
I've been on both sides of that, and while I appreciate execs that know how to give a project room to breath and find their footing, I also appreciate execs that know when to tear the bandaid off.
If he can spend time at work doing things he likes to do then why not? He could have spent that time churning out features instead, but now he got to clean up a codebase, some people like doing that sort of thing.
I can imagine caring about something like that if it was impending something important (say, it was about developing software that is part of court system/curing cancer/doing something that I consider personally important).
Or they are paid specifically for that, or they just spend they work hours on that.
Hopefully they are not spending unpaid overtime on that (unless they consciously volunteer to help with something important, not with widget marketing)
Ugh. I feel you. I left my last job in large part because I concluded that I had done as much as I ever would be able to in terms of improving things. Staying would just have led to increasing frustration. Better off leaving when I could feel good about the improvements that I made.
That is basically 90% of business line software that is built to support workflows and processes.
Employees don’t want the process, company wants process. Everyone building these is miserable and usually requirements are to actively make user lives miserable instead of easier.
Maybe I've been exceptionally lucky (although I've been very conscious to only work for SMEs which I think has a lot to do with it), but I always try really hard to figure out what the user/customer is actually trying to achieve, then what's the best way to get there using the resources available, regardless of any incumbent processes or strategy. To my mind this is the best of both worlds - I've got the satisfaction of making something great and the customer gets their life made easier.
As I've gone through my career I've focused less and less on some specific language or technology stack that is the flavour of the day, and I get my satisfaction from engineering a robust solution from whatever is the must appropriate technology in that specific case.
This article resonated with me a lot and had me reflecting on my journey writing komorebi.
I started writing komorebi because I had recently migrated to Windows and was really struggling without a tiling window manager. I didn't know anything about Win32 APIs when I started, or much about Rust either, actually.
Fast forward to today, and komorebi is sitting at 35k downloads, supported by a huge Discord server, a vibrant community, and hundreds of people watching me develop it on YouTube.
I created some incredibly important and impactful systems at $dayjob some years before I started komorebi. It was at a real low point in my life where I was struggling with depression, and I still _feel_ that when I look at the codebases and interact with those systems today. I wonder if others do, too. In some ways, I'm glad that those codebases and those systems are not public for others to see for that reason.
I am however, very glad that komorebi is out for the public to see, because I built it in a place of joy, hope and serenity, and I believe that those feelings are there to be seen in both the codebase and the product.
I really like your interpretation of psychology on resultant codebases. Personally, I have very mild bipolar-like tendencies, and I find that I don't really get much done except in my "manic" phases. If I'm feeling more charitable to myself I call it an explore/exploit loop. I consider it one of life's many seasons, and don't mind the oscillations too much.
However, while I've read serene code, my own code often reads as "manic" in my own estimation.
I haven't found the state of mind where I would even attempt serene code: when I'm at peace, writing code seems like a waste of time when there's trees and bubbling waters outside, and good friends and family to share gentle laughs with. I genuinely enjoy coding, but I would like it if I could find that serene mental space that also afforded productivity.
Oh that's interesting! I've been experiencing a similar thing recently. If I'm satisfied with life, there's not much drive to code, it feels like it's just going to disturb my peace.
But when I'm feeling like stuff just isn't good enough and something must be done, "doing something" means writing code, either until I'm satisfied or until I'm tired. Sometimes the codebases in my day job don't satisfy, so I contribute to open source instead, as that feels more impactful and permanent.
I wonder how many projects came into existence just because someone was unhappy with the way things were and the only thing they could do that felt impactful was programming.
I think what you have experienced is very real. Code (and most forms of expression) are a way to externalize your state of mind.
I've seen it with my own emotional states but also with coworkers when they are going trough a rough time.
This is also why it is difficult to understand others ppl code. And it gets easier as you build a relation/get to know them better. The better you know someone, the easier and faster you can understand their code.
I feel like that is why coding standards, code reviews etc make a codebase more maintainable. You strip the code emotions away or at least reset it to a common level across the team.
One reason why I went 100% Linux was because I couldn't find a window manager equivalent elsewhere that was anywhere close to i3. And yours, to me, looks competitive with i3.
The window manager has been the one killer feature that was just not available at the same level on MacOS or Windows. It's nice to see that changing.
>I'm a generalist too, or as someone else put it - a serial specialist. You could just stagnate until you retire. That's basically what I'm doing, but for slightly different reasons.
>Something i learned about myself a little bit farther in was that I wasn’t a generalist so much as I was a serial specialist (once you haven’t touched something you used the be good at for seven years, can you still claim to be good at it? Turns out I can’t).
>Going for knowledge just because it sounds cool isn't going to be a motivator strong enough for success. Find stuff you're interested in and dive into those. The way to become a well-rounded person is to become obsessive in many things (possibly not simultaneously) that are unusual in some way. In fact, learning anything will feel like specialization, and in fact being a serial specialist is probably the most viable way to become a "Renaissance man" today.
>Note that the first thing that came to my mind when I read your post was: "To be a true Renaissance man, you need to have been dead for 400 years". I won't write it here :)
The Church of the Subgenius has a similar concept called the "Short Duration Personal Savior" (or ShorDurPerSav, the proper Tibetian term):
>Wow; just wow. Thank you for filling that gaping hole in my education with Dick Tuck [1] [2]! My new short duration personal savior [2].
Speaking of favorite ShorDurPerSavs: John Gage [4], who was Sun Microsystem's "Science Officer" and turned the Sun logo 45 degrees on its corner, had the honor of serving his country on Nixon's enemies list [5] -- a distinguished achievement that L. Ron Hubbard falsely claimed about himself!
"I didn't hide what I did. I never tried to be malicious. It's just the difference between altering fortune cookies to make a candidate look funny and altering State Department cables to make it look as if a former President were a murderer." --Dick Tuck on the difference between himself and Nixon's Watergate operatives.
"The people have spoken, the bastards." --Dick Tuck's concession speech following his loss in the 1966 California State Senate election.
>BEGINNER LEVEL - CLEARED FOR ALL BOBBIES - BEGINNER LEVEL - CLEARED FOR
>Shockingly, some Bobbies are still unclear as to what a Short Duration Personal Savior is. The concept of the Short Duration Personal Savior (or ShorDurPerSav, the proper Tibetian term) is a new one-- traditional religions tend to emphasize "unwavering servitude" over convenience. But is absolute devotion to one savior always best? Buddha is a wonderful role model for certain aspects of life, but when that po'bucker shoves you out of the way as he walks by, don't you wish that you worshipped George Foreman instead, if only for the next few minutes?
>Well, you can! The Church of the SubGenius heartily endorses the concept of disposable saviors, or ShorDurPerSavs. Choose your messiah to fit the situation. If peace and compassion are what you need right now, follow the teachings of Gandhi. Later, when you need to cut a business deal, emulate the wisdom of Sam Walton. When you need a witty remark on the spot, let Samuel Clemens into your heart to inspire you. And when you need Slack in your life, sell your soul to "Bob".
>"Bob" is the most frequently invoked of our infinitely varied Short Duration Personal Saviors, with good reason. He has Slack--he IS Slack. He symbolizes the "easy life", where one follows the Path of Least Resistance and gains Slack effortlessly. But no one is expected to worship "Bob" 24/7! If you're trying to get that PC to work, choosing "Bob" as your ShorDurPerSav will hinder you far more than helping you! "Bob" couldn't use a PC if he wanted to (though he sold more of them last year than IBM and Packard Bell put together)! Read through Stephen Levy's _Hackers_ and let the TMRC be your ShorDurPerSavs! There ARE no limits!
:) I'm making something nobody wants right now and it's going great. It's giving my life the most purpose it's had in a few years. It's a financial disaster, of course, but trading money for personal fulfillment is a sweet deal IMO.
(and a shameless plug...)
https://ant.care/ if you want to derp around with a digital ant colony for a bit. The nest devolves into a mess after a couple of days tops right now.
If you think you've got ideas on how to improve the tunnel/chamber/nest expansion logic, or if you're better at implementing sand fall physics in Rust/ECS than me, I'd love to chat!
I'm glad you found it cute and enjoyable! I completely agree their behaviors need a lot more love, but I am ready to give it! :)
The actions of the workers are just probabilistic for now - they lack any true motivation.
The queen ant has an instinctual goal of creating a sufficiently spacious nest that is sufficiently deep underground. When she achieves that goal, she stops movement and begins giving birth to ants. Those ants then dig out the nest further.
I am trying to figure out how to make the digging more... inspired? Something like "If ants keep finding themselves surrounded by other ants underground then they need more space and should consider digging" or "If an ant fails to find a place to put food then it should consider digging"
I think that both of these things have a prerequisite of having tunnels/chambers built more effectively, though. I've played around with some rules like "Don't dig dirt if there is air on the opposite side of the dirt" in an attempt to prevent the nest from turning into a giant pit, but this doesn't result in tunnels and chambers, just delays the inevitable pit-like behavior.
In the future, there will be an "outer world" which has the more classic "ant follow pheromone trails to find food" mechanism. You'll see ants disappear out the sides of this view and see them explore from a top-down view. The outer world will get covered in fog each night and push all the ants back to their nest for sleeping and eating. Just trying to get to the point where they sensibly store food before expanding into that.
.. and if that was more info than you were looking for, sorry :D Just excited to talk about my thing.
Note: Dwarf Fortress is enormous, like trying to look at those 7000 item long Factorium expansions while not going crazy, and I suggest it not as discouragement. Simply ideas about those types of goal based behaviors.
Much of the behavior is based around creating caverns of various types, and then sending workers to find resources, gather resources, process resources, and then use those for even greater complexity tasks.
I wish I could help you figure it out, but I don't know much about these types of algorithms. Possibly, they already exist and you can plug them in. I know there's a lot of work done on maze-generation in games, maybe you can think of the tunnels as a maze, and pre-generate a path they will take, and update that model as other ants interact with it. Anyway I love the enthusiasm and wish you luck!
> you create something not because “I think they might need this,” but because “I find this so fucking interesting.”
This is a fantastic insight.
I also find that it's what often gets overlooked in open source projects that start as somebody doing something on the side as a hobby. Don't create and publish open source projects to please others. Build something that you like to have yourself. When publishing it, do it as an invitation to others to try it out and perhaps give you feedback (crowdsourcing bug triage and extension ideas), not to make others happy. The trap is that others will start feeling entitled, start demanding things, and if you give in, you violate the insight I quoted above. And if you start losing interest, don't cling on to the project, but be open to some other maintainer adopting it. Don't waste your time maintaining something you are not internally interested in.
The same is true also for users of open source projects. Be aware that whoever did this and published it for you to use did so originally because they like it and want to use it themselves. You can't demand things from somebody like that. If you do, you actually make it more likely that they lose interest.
Interesting how this is only really a problem today, 10-20 years ago most of what we built and shared was things we wanted to build. Things that were cool, and awesome.
But now we have to explicitly say it's OK that what we build isn't a unicorn start up idea. Not feasible for a global business. Hacker news comments always include how the idea can't be a business or is pointless, impractical etc.
Is it because money, wealth and status is becoming the number 1 thing on everyone's mind now?
Yes. The people involved in tech changed to a non-trivial degree over the last 15 years.
I grew up in a family that made software and I’ve been a professional myself for over twenty years.
The post-2008 cheap money era brought a huge influx of people that, at best, were not technology enthusiasts or tinkerers. A similar thing happened in the dot com era but a lot of those people got pushed out by the crash. We’ll see what happens this time.
Isn't this just your bubble growing up over the years?
Like, a decade or two ago, most people were trying to make a living, and that's true today too. But perhaps the people you knew and heard from a couple decades ago were younger and less focused on that than they are today.
I was pretty into passion projects and stuff in college, but I'm not very interested in those things now. They were just a better use of my time then; they really aren't a good use of my time now.
We should be wary of nostalgia for an idealized past that never existed. If you look at the semiconductor industry in the 1960s, the personal computer revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and the dot-com boom in the 1990s, there was always a mix of motivations for working on technology.
It could be that what we're making is different today. When I was a teenager, there was no Internet. The thing we made, was the thing we made.
Today, what we're making is the exhibition of the thing we're making. I'm guilty of this, thinking about the blog that I'll write about something, when it doesn't even work.
And is it wrong? I wouldn't enjoy playing music nearly as much if I didn't have a chance to perform in public once in a while.
That's pretty much my approach for side projects: If it's not something I need and enjoy, I don't do it.
Not sure about all that artsy "expression" talk. I also truly enjoy building products someone else needs and enjoys. When the guy who pays you is the guy who wants it, I find that similarly motivating, even if I myself will never have a need for what I built there.
Now, I've also been in a different situation: Being hired by someone to work on products for other people based on research and data. I don't care, the guy who pays me doesn't care, it's all about economics: Extract the maximum amount of money from users with the least effort. That I find demotivating. I don't think it's because I can't "express myself". It's just working on something that's not primarily trying to be useful or enjoyable, it's mainly trying to get bought/used.
I find the best products are those that are built with humans in mind. Who will be using it, how will they use it, why will they like it. Products/features that are following pure research/data tend to be missing a human element and rarely feel excellent regardless of their market performance.
I like the message, but I feel like the article doesn't support the headline. Instead, it seems to be saying that you should make something that you are passionate about, and in return other people will want it. I have not found that to be true personally, although I would like for it to be true.
What about a more subtle take? Have you built things in the same way that you'd do it in a personal context? Had a feeling of "doing the right thing"? Put care into your work?
How will that happen? If I don't know anything about photography, and don't even like it much, certainly don't care about it, my photography app will be garbage.
Lot of more traditional software is something the coders don't need or even use, but they still provide real value think of something like inventory tracking in warehouse.
I think I am quite capable of developing understanding of a domain and building a tool to solve a problem in it even if I don’t personally care that much about it. There’s plenty of software out there solving problems it’s hard to imagine much of anyone feeling passionate about.
Usually they are mediocre chefs. Actually I don't believe that a chef who doesn't like what he's cooking can make it right, and almost every awesome chef I know demand more from the quality of their dishes than their customers.
The product of a chef is the cooking, not the cooked product itself.
I often buy better ingredients than what's found at any restaurant, but I pay to sit at one because they're prepared, cooked and taste better when done by a professional.
Lately i have been wondering about the weird projects that people make- the “I built a web application framework in brainfuck” or “I built a text based bitmap image editor” or “I loaded an LLM on a Speak’n’Spell” kind of projects (I made up all of those but see similar on HN every day).
I understand passion projects and the article hints that might be the reason, but I just don’t understand why people would spend such enormous amounts of effort on such weird projects.
Because they find it fun? Interesting? I don’t understand how the opposite can be true. “Everything is a product” is a terrible mindset that too many people exhibit, especially those new to tech.
> I understand passion projects and the article hints that might be the reason, but I just don’t understand why people would spend such enormous amounts of effort on such weird projects.
There's a great side-effect to these quirky projects. There's a Christian/Bible story called The Unmoved Rock. Essentially God tells some guy to go push against a huge boulder and he damn well near kills himself trying to move it over and over. After a while he complains and God points out that he never asked him to move the rock, just to push it, and now the guy is totally ripped and strong as an ox.
Essentially, however useless or niche these things are, you yourself grow with the making and crafting of them. You exercise and develop your creative thinking, and your problem solving skills.
> There's a Christian/Bible story called The Unmoved Rock.
Where did you learn this story?
I'm curious, because it's a cute little anecdote/illustration, but I'm fairly confident it's not in the Protestant Bible, having read that several times.
No idea where I learned that story. I'm an athiest so it was something that bubbled up out of the broader culture that stuck, rather than a result of specific study. A bit like the footprints-in-the-sand story I guess.
It's called "The Unmoved Rock", and available on-line.
I thought that this is something that wasn't done before (analysing google comments with ChatGPT) and that would be amazing. https://sentimentscanner.com
Simple as that and market will verify.
Also it is nice to develop 5-10 times quicker then in scrum/jira ticket driven development. I couldn't believe that in Saturday I can do more then 1-2 weeks in my job. I of course understand that this doesn't scale to team, but yeah it is nice to feel that you can write good code so fast as a rockstar developer
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young
It's fun for them and they don't have the expectation that it will make money. And probably it doesn't, and that's fine, move on to the next thing. But once in a while, maybe it resonates with a greater need.
Bookmarking this to return to whenever I feel down on myself. I’ve been working on a side project for way too long, and I’m scared to publicize it because I don’t know whether it’s a terrible idea that everyone will hate.
But all I know is that I don’t hate it; I find it super interesting.
I'm a developer, not a designer, but I also find your work very interesting!
Every time a new design tool came out I need to learn that shit, and my drawing was always uglier than real designers. If I could do this by describing, I'd love to do it.
That looks pretty sweet! I can immediately see how there could be a companion framework that turns those descriptions into clickable prototypes, and how translation between designer and product people becomes really smooth. I love it!
Thanks! Yeah that would be pretty cool, I've been toying with the idea of adding behavior, but for various reasons I'm really trying to keep the language static. You could definitely build a framework on top of the language to support click events.
The article's title is a misnomer. (I can't tell whether that is intentional on the author's part or not.) The article describes making something you, the maker want, because you find it interesting--but then says that other people will end up wanting it too, because they also find it interesting. So you're not making something nobody wants: you want it, and you're not nobody, and others end up wanting it as well.
What the article really seems to be advising against is making something, not because you want it, but because you think others will want it. The article is basically arguing that that doesn't work. But why doesn't it work? Because in fact doing that ends up making something that nobody wants! You don't want it, and once you've made it, you find out others don't want it either.
At first the title was "make something you want", it's true and correct. but I felt it can not express what I truly felt at all. Current version is more close, though it's technically not correct.
Like when I build things, I'll tell myself: It's okay to make something nobody wants.
A fellow I knew would build boats. Sailboats. I don’t know much about boats but I’d say that these were something like 25-30 foot boats. These were not dinghies.
He started from raw plans, build the hull ribs, layer on the fiberglass for the hull (he bought his resin in 50 gallon drums). Now, of course, he has to sand and finish the fiberglass.
Once he got to that point, he’d build a rig around the hull out of wood that allowed the hull to rotate in place around its axis with a hydraulic Jack. He did all of this alone.
Once upright, he’d have about 5000 lbs of lead delivered to be placed and secured in the keel. At this point he gets the top parts of the hull and deck in place so he can weatherproof the interior.
The interior is all hardwood. Mahogany and such. His two car garage was a dedicated woodworking and cabinetry shop. The boat was in his fenced backyard.
When it was all said and done, 4-5 years later, a truck and a crane would come, lift it out of the backyard, and take it to the local harbor, 30 miles away.
Then, he’d sell it, start over, and make another.
He didn’t sail.
I know he made at least 3 of them. I’m sure he profited on raw materials, not so sure on time, certainly not on time/value of money.
He was a software developer by trade. He wrote accounting systems.
Software is a winner takes all market mostly. The best software of its kind captures almost all of the users. While making physical items is not. There will be loads of other people better than you, but it doesn't really matter because those other people will be sold out / too expensive / not local.
So even if you are far less talented than most, you'll still find a good market at the right price.
This smacks to me of peak late stage capitalism. Not everything ought to be about profit and growth. The world already has too much unwanted, useless mass produced surplus/crap.
Bear with me because it's not a perfect analogy, but it reminds me of this line from a Fleet Foxes song that landed exactly at the right (or wrong) moment in my life:
> I was raised up believing I was somehow unique ... now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me
I guess where I've landed is that I try to do both. I look for things to work on that are personally interesting to me, where I can also be "a functioning cog" working toward a larger positive goal far beyond myself.
It's hard to strike that balance though! And I often wonder if I would be better off committing more fully to one or the other side of it instead.
I think my recent project https://consciousness.social fits into the category of making something for the pure pleasure of it. But the medium of self-expression is the web, not the platform itself.
It’s like saying that the painting you are splashing color on is a medium of self-expression. I would rather say that painting itself is the medium.
>> Different expressions, conceived by various minds, undergo a form of natural selection, with the surviving expression being the one that resonates most with users. <<
I mean “survival” is a relative term. A painting may not survive, but the ideas encapsulated within that painting may come to inspire others to paint in a particular way. Does that mean that the initial painting survived? In some black and white definition, no. But look closely, and you may see some form of survival.
That’s why I wouldn’t necessarily see the most successful projects as those who attract the most attention. They may be obviously successful, but if something gives you pleasure to do and you “put your entire being” into it, it may be successful in more subtle ways that may not be obvious to you or anyone, really.
A friend of mine recently said that one of the books that I wrote changed the way he looks at the subjects the book was broaching. He asked me how many people I knew that were influenced by the ideas in the book. I replied that if it changed the view of even one person, then it’s enough for me, more than enough.
The most successful projects are those that change lives for the better…even for just one person, even in a non-obvious way. And you’re right, can’t see such things getting made without at least a bit of feeling.
> people can’t make something they don’t like and hope others will like it
There are implicit assumptions here about what "making" and "liking" means in this context. The vast majority of stuff that gets done and used is rote (think preparing daily food) and doesn't involve likeability in critical ways. It simply requires usability and maybe the absence of dislikeability.
Now if you want to invent a new dish, the calculus changes and becomes a mix of hopeless inertia (people don't easily change tastes) and stochasticity (except when they do).
What is more important imho is that whatever you do is a concrete, articulated something. That is what is usually expressed by the "what problem does it solve?" question. While I don't think that casting everything as a "problem" covers all bases, the idea is that people like having their problems solved. An ugly solution is still a solution.
But even those are partial considerations. People also just like stuff that other people like (fashion) with little intrinsic justification besides being part of a group.
my takeaway from this piece was a bit diff than what seems to have been talked about so far.
clearing out externalities and understanding your own emotional response to a product- whether you’ve built it or not - is likely hard to learn, and is intuition driven.
and it is understanding this response that allows builders to create things that evoke a similar emotional response in others.
Personally, I’ve always been convinced that having this kind of ability is what enables people to make the difference between a very good and a truly great product.
One of few things that I hold pretty tight is that I don't put any expectations out of others approvals when it comes to self actualisation. if people find it repulsive, that's fine. when they find it ok, that's also fine.
SPF is broken in many more ways than described in this presentation. I work as an email hardening / deliverability support engineer and our advice is always to focus on DKIM + DMARC, rather than SPF. You still need SPF for legacy reasons, but it should never be relied on for deliverability or anti-impersonation.
Slide 54 says that DKIM + DMARC does not help against this attack, but that is not completely true.
If (and only if) you have set up DKIM for all your delegated senders, then (and only then) can you safely enable a DMARC p=reject policy. Once you have reached that level, you can start opting out of SPF for third party senders, by using the '?' (neutral) modifier in SPF.
So this:
v=spf1 include:relay.mailchannels.net ~all
Becomes this:
v=spf1 ?include:relay.mailchannels.net ~all
This gives emails from MailChannels a neutral SPF stance with DMARC capable receivers, causing them to use DKIM instead. Old legacy email services should still accept neutral results as well.
Granted, it is not a perfect solution, but email will never be 100% reliable, or secure anyway.
I think I get what the author trying to say. In my years as a graphic designer (mostly print), I intuitively knew when something “felt right”, and when that happened, I often have made something that I am still proud of today. It may have not been for everyone and it may have been hard to sell to clients (who often prefer what they have already seen in successful examples), but I didn’t care, because I saw the value in it and often a few other people also did.
Those were the projects that I redesigned multiple times, because the previous approach just didn’t “feel right”. I invested a lot of research into that feeling, it was somehow addictive (and sometimes equally frustrating) to me.
As a developer, I now have a similar experience with personal projects that grew out of my own curiosity. When doing something for clients, I often feel myself torn between what feels “right” to me and what the client actually wants or prefers. It may often not be what they really need, and I know that, but this is why I must have my personal projects, because client work often feels unfulfilling to me (however, it is fulfilling in a different way).
Making something you like, and not some BS trying to triangulate the needs of some hypothetical user, is a very enjoyable way to go about a career in design and engineering. I'm lucky to be in that boat and have the ability to work on something I personally use as well. It makes so many things easy: I can have an insight from using the product myself, build a solution for it, ship it, and in general users share the same insight and appreciate it.
However, as I enjoy this, what often gives me pause about it is thinking about fields like medical device development, or services for the poor, where most people working on the product aren't in the market for that product. I don't think the same ethos applies as well there and it probably means that to accomplish something meaningful in these domains, a hefty dose of cognitive empathy is necessary, as well as checking one's own insights regularly to make sure we're not imagining things.
I think it's ok, great even, the urge to make something that's so strong that you do act on it.
Having said a lot of people do software development for a living and they may depend on your project. So I think OSS authors do have the responsibility to word their motivation honestly, when they publish their projects.
I can't figure out what you're even trying to say.
What risk of being misled is even possible in oss?
There are junk oss put out by companies that want to claim they do oss for PR, but no one is misled by that. If the code is junk that doesn't do anything but say, shim a blob which contains the actual goods, everyone knows that, as there is no way to hide it.
There are lots of crap oss, or high quality oss who's design goals I don't like, but none of that is misleading.
There are oss where the original author changed their terms after some time, but then everyone just forks the last good version and proceeds from there.
There are companies that try to steal oss, but the original thing they try to sell is still there.
In no case is there any opportunity for misleading that I see, because regardless of anyone's thoughts or intentions, the actions are all in the open.
It's very simple, just put the project up and note: "I make a thing the way I like it". Do not paint a picture of something that you've made for public interests and actively encourage people to use it. Like when you make a fancy website and docs and benchmarks to compare to the n projects (that people depends on) before yours.
I personally would never use young OSSes, regardless of quality, but there are lots of gulible people in the software industry, not dissimilar to life in general.
> I think it's ok, great even, the urge to make something that's so strong that you do act on it.
This has been my year for this. There's been a backlog of projects that I had to "code out of my system". None of them commercially viable, but all that tugged at me.
hehe, that's how I made `m4b-tool`[1] - a command line tool written in PHP (!) using external tools to merge audio files to a single iTunes compatible m4b file.
It started as one single simple script and now has grown into a maintenance hell of a thing, but I still use it on a weekly basis :-)
Unfortunately atm I cannot even afford the time to redirect the github sponsoring income to charities[2], but by the end of the year, this might change.
Though I wish that big tech would make a little more of what I actually want, instead of drifting towards enshittification. Which I guess is some sort of self-expression for big tech, but probably not in the sense TFA approves of.
I like the article. Reminds me of when I started working on EndBASIC. People, especially close friends, would joke about it and ask why I wasted time on such a project.
I started on a comment but ended up writing a post on my own. In my opinion, if your goal is to achieve mainstream success, the method may not be advisable unless you have ample resources for experimentation.
Good advice, and I’d take this a step further and say sometimes the thing you’re making isn’t wanted by anyone now, but will be by people in the future.
My go-to example here is Nietzsche, who spent most of his life writing in obscurity. He actually had to pay to have some of his books published. Only after he became mentally incapacitated and died did his fame grow, and now he’s generally considered one of the three most important thinkers of the era, along with Marx and Freud.
Obviously making a little hobby web app is not the same as writing books about the future of Western civilization, but I think the lesson is: work on what you really think is important, not on what you’ve convinced yourself is important by listening to others.
Of course it is - there is no duty to be useful. But it's even better (funner, more fulfilling, more likely to make you money) to make something that some one specific person you know wants. Could be you, could be a partner or a close friend/relative - doesn't really matter, as long as it's someone you know well.
I have quite a bit of tools/progs or game mods that pretty much nobody uses.
Mostly because they are very niche and long dead OS. Same for games, nobody plays them anymore. Is this making me sad? A bit, because would be cool to share and play. But, from other side I have stuff I can tinker myself and play too.
An inspiring take, but like all things, it's a balancing act. There is great satisfaction in making things people want. The fact that you get money for this biases everything that way, but as plenty of academics and experimental artists will tell you, it can also be soul crushing to make things no one wants.
I relate. "Make something you will enjoy making" — I tried to instill the essence of this in a coding event I organised recently, but I don't think I was successful. Maybe I should have sent this blog post to people instead — "It's okay to make something nobody wants" — a new mantra.
I find it fascinating. I cannot tell you how many complain about corporate structure, meaningless paperwork, and working on projects that are just money traps for consumers. When asked why do you work here ? Get the same blank stare.
Somehow people appear to be easily influenced to end up working at corporations and on projects devoid of real meaning, passion or soul. Almost a depressed defeatist attitude like .. yeah I live in this overpopulated city that I don’t like .. working at a corporation that treats people as cogs .. making a product that is designed to exploit others … and ohh by the way I am kind of depressed.
As it turns out, access to finance is tightly controlled by a (relative to the rest of the poulace) small population that sets the tone for the rest. Essentially, thry make the on-ramps.
You wanna change it? Good luck. Save up and do your best with the time you've got, because if it doesn't mesh with the overall tune, you're done.
Easy to put the blame on the individual when you don't take into account the rest of the environment.
I do it all the time. I'd say that 90% of the work I've done, over the last couple of decades, has lain fallow, died quietly in a corner, or been outright rejected.
But that 10%...
If nothing else, it's practice.
But, whatever it is, we always need to power through the "boring bits," to make our dream a reality.
10% is a good percentage, it's been 0% for me. Then again, my best art project has been https://imgz.org, which I knew wasn't really going to get used much by other people.
Lately I've been thinking more about the craft of creating than the outcome of what people want.
This separation from creation to outcome is a nice feeling, and I think has let me be a bit more creative (though that has never been a big problem for me).
Seeing the Game of Life display stirred a memory in me of finding this book in the public library at a very influential age and obsessing over it (I checked it out multiple times):
I remember being fascinated by Conway's Game of Life (and implementing it a few times in a few languages) and, of course, also became fascinated by fractals, but never understood them as well.
I haven't thought about it, but that book was incredibly important to my path through the world of programming.
Your prices are surprisingly low. I assume you're not trying to make money so much as scratch an itch, but I wonder if you'd sell even more if you charged a more premium price and added a few more details / higher quality pictures.
Really cool work, dude - thanks for sharing and for the nostalgia trip.
I too was interested in fractals back then. I attended a fascinating lecture by Dr. Mandelbrot around 1988.
Regarding pricing: yes, I will raise prices after I make a few more sales and establish myself as a reputable Etsy seller. I also agree that I need to improve the listings with more details and better product photos. Thanks for the feedback!
It looks like I've sold out of some items, so they've been de-listed on Etsy.
If anyone else is interested in seeing what I'm building...
I’d certainly hope so. The number of things I have built that apparently no one but me has a use for is very high. I have an entire ecosystem of products that only I use.
I feel this resonates with mindfulness lifestyle: give your full attention to the present moment and the quality of your activity (and product) will show.
I’ll push back on this. I think most of us want some external validation that what we’re creating is useful and valuable.
I spent 2 solid years working on https://improve.ai and it’s gotten very little uptake. It’s taken a long time to emotionally get over putting that much blood, sweat, and money into something that almost no one values.
Going forward I will be failing much faster and not giving my life energy to products that aren’t showing traction.
If someone made a household cleaning detergent or some vitamin powder that nobody wanted, would we still be saying these products aren’t really for users, but rather are just another medium of self expression?
Is it okay for them to still exist? Sure, it’s also okay to be a loser. Seen through a capitalist lens, the point of a product is to serve a useful purpose. If nobody wants or needs it, it doesn’t suddenly become a work of art representing an extension of its creator – it’s just a shitty product.
The market is a conversation, and if you’re not making something people want, you’re not connecting with others, you’re just babbling to yourself. Software always seems to be held to some different standard, but it really shouldn’t. Code is cattle, not pets.
Yea like.... I've been "following my heart" or whatever for over 15 years... sure, I made some cool shit, and some people really like it. But it doesn't pay. I need money.
To invent something objectively novel and significant. To spend a fair chunk of your life on that quest. And to get zero monetary compensation for it. To be ignored that way. It's educational.
Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
I wish I'd learned that sooner.