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1/ Ryan Dahl (creator of Node.js) wrote an epic rant and then quit writing software for a while. I want to repost it here now.
2/ "I hate almost all software. It's unnecessary and complicated at almost every layer. At best I can congratulate someone for quickly...
3/ ...and simply solving a problem on top of the shit that they are given. The only software that I like is one that I can easily...
4/ ...understand and solves my problems. The amount of complexity I'm willing to tolerate is proportional to the size of the problem...
5/ ...being solved.
6/ In the past year I think I have finally come to understand the ideals of Unix: file descriptors and processes orchestrated with C.
7/ It's a beautiful idea. This is not however what we interact with. The complexity was not contained. Instead I deal with DBus and...
8/ .../usr/lib and Boost and ioctls and SMF and signals and volatile variables and prototypal inheritance and _C99_FEATURES_ and dpkg and...
9/ ...autoconf.
10/ Those of us who build on top of these systems are adding to the complexity. Not only do you have to understand $LD_LIBRARY_PATH to...
11/ ...make your system work but now you have to understand $NODE_PATH too - there's my little addition to the complexity you must now...
12/ ...know! The users - the one who just want to see a webpage - don't care. They don't care how we organize /usr, they don't care about...
13/ ...zombie processes, they don't care about bash tab completion, they don't care if zlib is dynamically linked or statically linked to...
14/ ...Node. There will come a point where the accumulated complexity of our existing systems is greater than the complexity of creating....
15/ ...a new one. When that happens all of this shit will be trashed. We can flush boost and glib and autoconf down the toilet and never....
16/ ...think of them again.
17/ Those of you who still find it enjoyable to learn the details of, say, a programming language - being able to happily recite off if.....
18/ ...NaN equals or does not equal null - you just don't yet understand how utterly fucked the whole thing is. If you think it would be....
19/ ...cute to align all of the equals signs in your code, if you spend time configuring your window manager or editor, if put unicode...
20/ ...check marks in your test runner, if you add unnecessary hierarchies in your code directories, if you are doing anything beyond...
21/ ...just solving the problem - you don't understand how fucked the whole thing is. No one gives a fuck about the glib object model.
22/ The only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user." – Ryan Dahl </END OF RANT> The tone is pretty angry, but he's.
23/ ...totally right. Most programmers have a personality type that makes them especially vulnerable to focusing on the wrong things.
24/ This is a mistake I make all the time, so I need to constantly remind myself what is actually important. We need more tools like...
25/ ...@StandardJS, prettier, & semantic-release that discourage endless futzing with config options – a rabbit hole for most programmer.
26/ Offering config options is the equivalent of "nerd sniping" a typical perfectionist programmer. xkcd.com/356
27/ "Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done." – Bre Pettis and Kio Stark feross.org/cult-of-done/
28/ "Worse is Better" This talk is full of cringe, but it also makes a really important point, even in its delivery.
