[HN Gopher] Craft software that makes people feel something
___________________________________________________________________
Craft software that makes people feel something
Author : lukeio
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-12-11 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rapha.land)
(TXT) w3m dump (rapha.land)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Love how the mouse trail effect is using O(1) memory no matter
| how fast you move the mouse so it won't blow up your browser.
| queuebert wrote:
| Genuine question: What else would it do? The mouse trail is a
| history of coordinates, so that should be linear, right?
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| rage after moving my mouse on that site...great work !
| deadbabe wrote:
| Dread is a feeling.
| mcphage wrote:
| There's definitely software that wants to make people feel
| dread. Mostly horror games and Atlassian applications.
| T_Potato wrote:
| Yes, that's a good one! Many skilled programmers working in
| corporations like to go for this one.
| PTOB wrote:
| In so far as it makes me feel the relief, awe, and pleasure of
| picking up a good tool, then by all means.
|
| The mouse trail made me feel something else.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Love the mouse cursor, it made me feel happy.
| torginus wrote:
| The title sounds like the Chinese curse of software development.
|
| Fun tidbit: Just to make sure I got it right, I quickly googled
| the phrase. Gemini's elaboration on the topic truly made me feel
| something. Gemini's answer:
|
| _A "Chinese curse" often refers to the phrase "May you live in
| interesting times," though it's not actually Chinese but a
| misinterpreted English saying, while actual Chinese curses
| involve direct insults like "Cao ni ma" (Fuck your mother(sic!))_
| mmooss wrote:
| Gemini conflates two meanings of 'curse'. One is a quasi-
| ritulistic invocation of some power to change the object's
| fate. The other is intentionally rude, transgressive words used
| to attack or humiliate.
| amelius wrote:
| I don't know what the article was about because I got distracted,
| but the mouse animation looks great!
| ghjv wrote:
| habitually move my cursor while reading things... so Feels Bad
| for sure
| Minor49er wrote:
| > When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating
| something that makes people go "wow" are reduced quite a bit.
|
| Unless you're working on something with a lot of breadth, of
| course. A great example is yt-dlp which works on a huge number of
| sites. The wow-factor is high because it feels like it just works
| everywhere. That's only possible through a huge number of data
| parsers, many of which are not terribly different from one
| another
| crumpled wrote:
| Looks like they disabled the mouse effect thing everyone is
| talking about, for the articles. So if you want to see it, go to
| the homepage of the site.
| pedrozieg wrote:
| There's something refreshing about explicitly saying "this editor
| exists to delight me, and that's enough". The default script now
| is that every side project should either be open-sourced or
| turned into a SaaS, even if that pressure is exactly what kills
| the weirdness that made it interesting in the first place.
|
| Some of the best tools I've used felt like they started as
| someone's private playground that only later got hardened into
| "serious" software. Letting yourself park Boo, go build a
| language, and come back when it's fun again is probably how we
| get more Rio/Boo-style experiments instead of yet another VS Code
| skin with a growth deck attached.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I'm very much for people open-sourcing their projects in terms
| of releasing the source code. Just don't accept patches or
| whatever, keep the repos closed
| mirashii wrote:
| Unfortunately, and I think to great overall harm, GitHub does
| not let you disable many of the collaboration features. I was
| just having a discussion today with someone who would be fine
| open sourcing their code, but is uninterested in any
| contributions, questions, or community interaction. Since
| GitHub won't allow that, their options are to host it
| somewhere themselves where nobody will see it, or just don't
| publish it, which is ultimately what happened.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > GitHub does not let you disable many of the collaboration
|
| I wish they'd allow making issues and pull requests sponsor
| only. Could enable a business model.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| It's weird that this thread argues to keep the fun in
| hobby projects and you ask for the exact opposite.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's precisely because of the hobby nature of my projects
| that I want this feature. Support and collaboration are a
| lot of work. I have trouble conjuring up enough
| motivation to work on my projects as it is.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| Sponsors can have quite a bit more entitlement then the
| average github dude. But well, maybe if you lock it down
| for sponsors the stress level is overall lower.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Sponsors can have quite a bit more entitlement then the
| average github dude.
|
| Is this some sort of unwritten agreement? When I was
| setting up my sponsor page, I explored the sponsor pages
| of other users for ideas. I don't think there were many
| sponsorship tiers with special features. Some people
| offered advertising space on the README, others offered
| access to an exclusive Discord channel, most just thanked
| the sponsor.
|
| I'm still new at this so I wouldn't know. I only ever had
| one sponsor. Happened organically after my work was
| independently posted here on HN once.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| Oh my mistake I was thinking of individual donations,
| which may be implied as some premium service. I think a
| company/org sponsor should be more professional. In
| theory you can just cancel a sponsor if it doesn't fit.
| You can turn your back on on donations, but you somehow
| owe the donators forever.
|
| Edit: https://pocketbase.io/faq/
|
| Look at the bottom, just an example how sponsors/donors
| may affect you.
| tacone wrote:
| I found working with AI as the code buddy to be
| motivating (ironically). You get to chat about the
| project, ask opinions and in general have somebody do the
| work you don't find inspiring.
|
| AI often doesn't do things your way, but if your doing
| something for yourself you usually care more about the
| goal than the technicalities. Also AI working on a hobby
| code base is less prone to overcomplication since it
| basically copies what you've wrote yourself.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I had a similar experience. Just chatting about stuff,
| shooting ideas and concepts back and forth with the AI is
| quite stimulating. I get to be an obnoxious help vampire
| without draining other humans of their patience and
| motivation. It's like having a developer friend with
| infinite patience to chat with.
|
| In terms of productivity it's having something of a mixed
| effect. It gives me very clear ideas and direction but at
| the same time everything just feels done afterwards. All
| that's left is _actually executing_ the tasks which is...
| Boring.
|
| I'm not sure I trust ChatGPT to do it for me like an
| agent. The examples it gives me are never quite right.
| It's probably a lot better at generating frontend
| javascript code than programming language interpreter
| code.
| munificent wrote:
| I have a hobby game up on GitHub. The README explains that
| it's open source for people to fork it and file issues, but
| that I don't accept contributions. So far, it seems like
| that's been very effective.
|
| We don't always have to solve problems with technology.
| Sometimes you can just tell people things.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Odds are, you're not going to get any contributions even if
| you do want them. So they could just upload regardless.
|
| And if the README explicitly says the project isn't open to
| contributors nor feature requests, then you're even less
| likely to see that (and have a very valid reason to
| politely close any issues on the unlikely scenario that
| someone might create one).
|
| The vast majority of stuff on GitHub goes unnoticed by the
| vast majority of people. And only a very small minority of
| people ever interact with the few projects they do pull
| from GH.
| mirashii wrote:
| > Odds are, you're not going to get any contributions
| even if you do want them. So they could just upload
| regardless.
|
| This is not my personal experience nor the experience of
| a number of folks that I know personally. I think it's
| pretty hard to generalize about this.
|
| > The vast majority of stuff on GitHub goes unnoticed by
| the vast majority of people. And only a very small
| minority of people ever interact with the few projects
| they do pull from GH.
|
| So what? It's probably not going to impact you, so it's
| okay and we just have to deal with it? I reject that
| logic entirely.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| The obvious solution is to just not use github but that's
| probably not super easy for people without the resources to
| just throw a tarball on a server somewhere and link people
| to it
| Lammy wrote:
| I use an Action to auto-close any Issue or PR in my hobby
| repo for same reason:
| https://github.com/marketplace/actions/repo-lockdown
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I use GitHub Actions to affect issues and pull requests
| also, but to assign them to myself (so that they are
| visible in searches), not to close them. However, for
| some reason it does not seem to work properly for pull
| requests, even though it works for issues.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I hardly get any contributions, questions, etc even though
| I have published them on GitHub (although some people do
| watch and/or star them, but I don't really care much how
| many stars it has).
|
| I think you can disable issues but not pull requests, as
| far as I know.
|
| It might be helpful to allow to disable pull requests too,
| and possibly to hide how many stars/watchers there are and
| hide the list of forks (people could still star, watch,
| and/or fork the repository, but they would not be listed on
| that repository if the display of those features are
| disabled).
|
| Whether or not GitHub accepts these ideas, it can be an
| idea that other services (e.g. Codeberg) can consider
| adding such options if they want to do (as well as other
| things).
| BeetleB wrote:
| > There's something refreshing about explicitly saying "this
| editor exists to delight me, and that's enough".
|
| (Emacs)
| hgs3 wrote:
| > The default script now is that every side project should
| either be open-sourced or turned into a SaaS
|
| I think its worse then that. It seems the narrative is
| everything needs to be enterprise-scale by default. Those who
| value small languages and tools, experimentation, self-hosting,
| and the do-it-yourself mindset are the counterculture.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Kinda tangential but in the advent of AI I feel like there won't
| be a niche for "handcrafted software".
|
| When quartz watches came up the makers of mechanical watches
| struggled. Quartz watches are cheaper, more accurate in many
| cases and servicing is usually restricted to replacing a battery.
| However some people appreciate a good mechanical watch (and the
| status symbol aspect of course) and nowadays the mechanical watch
| market is flourishing. Something similar happened with artificial
| fabrics (polyester, acrylic) and cheap made clothes, there's a
| market for handmade clothes that use natural fabrics.
|
| Nobody (well, barring a few HN readers) will ever care if the
| software was written by people or a bot, as long as it works.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| So the proof for your claim is two counterexamples?
| ares623 wrote:
| I believe OP's intent was that for software, normal users
| don't see or understand what's under the hood so how the
| software is built doesn't matter.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Exactly. I thought my last paragraph made it clear that
| software is _not_ like the other couple of things.
| tuveson wrote:
| Or maybe it's like someone saying homecooked meals and
| professional chefs are outdated because McDonalds exists.
| Homecooked meals are cheaper and healthier, and professional
| chefs still make better food. I don't think McDonalds is about
| to disappear, but I'm pretty sure those other categories aren't
| about to become obsolete any time soon.
| nicbou wrote:
| I disagree. It enables more people to build utility software
| without the pain of writing the boilerplate code for it. This
| should leave more room for their taste and expertise.
|
| That's how it works for me. I'm currently turning a lot of raw
| data into a map of Berlin rents. I spend less time figuring out
| the map API, and more time polishing the interesting parts.
|
| I don't care if a craftsman used hand tools or a CNC to build
| beautiful furniture. I pay for taste, not toil.
| macintux wrote:
| I think you're agreeing, not disagreeing. I also misread the
| comment originally.
|
| Emphasis mine:
|
| > there _won't_ be a niche
| jesse__ wrote:
| This is a bad analogy.
|
| > more accurate in many cases
|
| It's laughable that LLMs can be considered more accurate than
| human operators at the macro level. Sure, if I ask a search bot
| the date Notre Dame was built, it'll get it right more often
| than me, but if I ask it to write even a simple heap memory
| allocator, it's going to vomit all over itself.
|
| > Nobody [...] will ever care if the software was written by
| people or a bot, as long as it works
|
| Yeah.. wake me up when LLMs can produce even nominally complex
| pieces software that are on-par with human quality. For
| anything outside of basic web apps, we're a _long_ way off.
| mmooss wrote:
| > if I ask a search bot the date Notre Dame was built, it'll
| get it right more often than me
|
| With both of you doing research in your own ways, you'll get
| it right more often (I hope).
| cons0le wrote:
| Watches are a horrible example. The rich buy them because
| they're a status symbol. Rich people aren't going to start
| retaining teams of software experts just for status.
|
| "Mechanical watches" also aren't exploding at all. When people
| cite this, they're citing the overall watch market growing,
| because the market for million dollar watches is being driven
| by a very small group of collectors. Its also not sustainable,
| and will die down in ~10-20 years when these old guys finish
| dying. The average not rich person could not give less of a
| damn about mechanical watches. There's no great comeback on the
| horizon
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Nobody (well, barring a few HN readers) will ever care if the
| software was written by people or a bot, as long as it works.
|
| That is probably true. But all evidence to date is that if the
| software is written by a bot, it won't work. That is why people
| will care.
| swader999 wrote:
| I think with tools like Claude code you can more easily tackle
| niche areas that would benefit from custom crafted features and
| then using the app would feel like it was purpose built for the
| specific task at hand. Sure the code might not look hand crafted,
| but if it works and solves problems in the world...
| dzink wrote:
| That was the thought when I designed https://dianazink.com
| militanz wrote:
| Very interesting, I learnt Rust for the same reason: having fun
| doing something that I need and learning new things in the
| process.
|
| Good luck for your new project!
| imiric wrote:
| > I don't really feel I need to follow people's cake recipe for
| success.
|
| That's great, but then what's the point of this article?
|
| The author is seemingly offering advice about why and how
| software should be built, but then claims to not follow anyone
| else's advice. Cool.
|
| Just do whatever makes you happy. If you want to work on
| proprietary editors and programming languages, go ahead. I would
| argue that doing that in the open would both improve the projects
| and make the world a better place, far more than blogging about
| them does, but this doesn't matter if you're optimizing for
| personal happiness.
| ozim wrote:
| Yeah I make software that makes people feel something - rage -
| there are 2 types of software one that no one cares about and
| software that people use and voice their opinions about :)
| elcritch wrote:
| I was looking for this comment. For example Microsoft Teams and
| Office 365 make me feel something, but it's not joy.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I feel bad for the poor souls that are forced to work on
| software like that. It surely can't be fun
| logicchains wrote:
| They might be sadists having the time of their lives. There
| are few better opportunities in life to get away
| consequence free with causing pain to a huge amount of
| people, than working on Microsoft Teams. Not only get away
| with it consequence free; they're even getting paid for it!
| mcny wrote:
| I have not met a single softie who defended the decision
| to make ctrl shift c the shortcut to start a call in a
| group chat when ctrl shift v is paste unformatted.
|
| Especially given that the teams client doesn't allow
| disabling or editing keyboard shortcut.
|
| Microsoft employees may be lazy but unlike Facebook
| employees (I refuse to call it meta), I don't think they
| are evil.
| wyre wrote:
| H1-B visas? Their alternative surely isn't better.
| smm11 wrote:
| Circus Ponies Notebook.
|
| That was a look into a world we steered away from.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I love that essay.
|
| I tend to do things the same way. I write software that _I_ want
| to use.
|
| I do tend to go "all the way," though. Making it ship-Quality,
| releasing it on the App Store, providing supporting Web
| documentation, etc.
|
| Makes me feel good to do it.
|
| I always used to say "My dream is to work for free."
|
| Livin' the dream...
| ZebusJesus wrote:
| Boo is an interesting name for an editor what feature were you
| looking to make that others didn't have? I like your website by
| the way, the blue square that turns the mouse cursor into a
| tracer is a neat effect and makes interacting with your content
| fun!
| jesse__ wrote:
| > created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making
| it [...] mainstream
|
| This is a habit I picked up from two people I respect greatly as
| programmers; Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow.
|
| Those guys both built their own little lands; Jon went as far as
| building a new language, a 3D game engine in that language, and
| has multiple game titles in-flight in the engine.
|
| I have a handful of projects that are similar in spirit. I'm
| largely the only, and target, user of these projects. It's
| _joyful_ to work in an environment you control completely. No
| deadlines, no feature requests, no support tickets, no garbage
| collector, no language runtime .. just me and the OS having a
| party.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Those guys both built their own little lands
|
| Do you mean they created their own fictional geographic worlds
| (or parts of worlds)? That's amazing. Many - including Tolkien,
| I think - have started that way. Sometimes, the world finds out
| about it. Robert Louis Stevenson started with a map.
| jesse__ wrote:
| Hah, I should have been more specific. They created
| programming environments that are entirely their own.
| Although Jon has created several games which include
| fictional geographic worlds.
| mmooss wrote:
| Still, it seems like the same thing to me, just in a
| different medium. Though the public has a much easier time
| understanding maps than programming environments.
| jesse__ wrote:
| Agreed
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Blow hasn't shipped anything in 10 years. I think Casey as well
| leecommamichael wrote:
| What if he ships a game and a programming language by the end
| of next year? In 2 years? In 5 years?
|
| I think if he ships a game and a programming language in any
| of those timeframes I will be very impressed. I also think it
| is likely.
| jesse__ wrote:
| I'd consider JAI shipped, it's just not publicly available.
| There are hundreds or thousands of developers in the beta at
| this point. Next time you build a new programming language,
| 3D game engine and ship a game in less than 10 years, lemme
| know.
|
| Casey's done both Handmade Hero, and Performance Aware
| Programming. Some of the best programming educational content
| available, in my opinion.
| jesse__ wrote:
| I'd consider JAI shipped, it's just not publicly available.
| There are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of developers in the
| beta at this point. Next time you build a new programming
| language, 3D game engine, and ship a game, lemme know how
| long it takes.
|
| Casey's done both Handmade Hero, and Performance Aware
| Programming. Some of the best programming educational content
| available, in my opinion.
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| I'm stuck on the opening sentence. Family went to sleep in the
| morning so rest of the day is free? I must be missing something
| but that doesn't make sense.
|
| Did the author chloroform them?
| apsurd wrote:
| babies? nap time?
| munificent wrote:
| I think English isn't their first language. I believe they mean
| "are still asleep".
| trashface wrote:
| I've done this, but the product I made is prohibited by the terms
| of service of the application it works with, and that industry is
| litigious and authoritarian. So I'm never going to release it, or
| even talk about it.
| devinprater wrote:
| Emacs and Emacspeak make me feel something. A lot of something.
| This kind of "playground" feeling where I can dive into a manual
| that's just sitting right there. The the entire Emacs is a
| manual. C-h m and boom, all keyboard commands for that mode are
| right, feaking, there. No hidden bullcrap, no patchwork HTML
| tables to drudge through, nothing. And if something doesn't work
| with Emacspeak, I can Codex it into working. Maybe. Enough to get
| what I want done, done.
| css_apologist wrote:
| i remember making the switch from atom to vscode felt so cold
|
| i can't explain what, it wasn't just the colour scheme
|
| atom was objectively worse on performance and a few other things
| i forget, but it felt so good to use
| mmooss wrote:
| > created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making
| it [...] mainstream
|
| This is how many artists have worked. They make something for
| themself, and one day they show it to someone else ... or they
| just get the urge to share it more widely, often without the hope
| that anyone will really be interested. Or they keep it for
| themself.
|
| I think Tolkien is in that group, for example. But don't get the
| wrong idea from an extreme outlier: much of the time, others
| aren't interested, or not many are. Sometimes, nobody is
| interested until after you've forgotten about it or passed away.
| Who cares? That's one reason you need to make it for yourself.
| Also, I think that otherwise it provides much less expression and
| insight into another person, which is at the core of art. There
| is a fundamental human need to 'externalize the imagination'.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Several years ago, I wrote an angry email to loved ones about
| something I'd seen in national news (USA) about my city. A
| friend replied saying that he thought I should submit it to a
| local paper. Ended up as an op-ed. Not a major claim to fame,
| but I was still pleased that someone cared enough about my
| words to publish.
| nospice wrote:
| > This is how many artists have worked. They make something for
| themself, and one day they show it to someone else
|
| That model depended on personal wealth or (more often)
| patronage. Because the supply of wealthy patrons was limited,
| it meant that you had fewer artists pursuing their visions.
| Everyone else needed to find menial jobs.
|
| Now, we democratized access to patronage, but it means that to
| support yourself, you need to deliver what gets you the most
| clicks, not what your soul craves.
|
| I sort of wish we still had both models, but I think that
| wealthy patrons have gone out of fashion in favor of spending
| money on crypto and AI.
| eikenberry wrote:
| > That model depended on personal wealth or (more often)
| patronage.
|
| "They make something for themself, .."
|
| For the vast majority of people this means doing it on the
| side, in addition to their day-job. I've known a lot of
| artists in my time and we all have day jobs. You do art for
| yourself because you love to create, not expecting to make
| any significant money on it.
| nospice wrote:
| Right, which works great if your daytime job is being a
| professor at Oxford, but maybe less so if your only
| opportunity is farm labor or other physically exhausting
| job.
|
| Today, more people have the opportunity to dabble in art
| than ever before.
| frutiger wrote:
| He started writing his stories long before he was a
| Professor. It was while he was a young man fighting in
| the First World War.
| mrec wrote:
| Personally I've found it much easier to sustain creative
| stuff on the side while doing a non-knowledge-based job
| than a knowledge-based one. Mental exhaustion is much
| more of a drag than physical. (Though the knowledge-based
| hours were longer too, which I'm sure was a factor.)
| mmooss wrote:
| There are plenty of impovrished, struggling artists - it's a
| cliche - and especially unknown ones creating for themselves.
|
| > Everyone else needed to find menial jobs.
|
| That doesn't mean you can't create art. Anthony Trollope
| worked for the post office. Einstein, who externalized
| imagination in somewhat different way and attributed much to
| art, was a patent clerk. New York and LA are filled with
| waitstaff-artists. A friend hired a moving company that
| almost exclusively hired artists as movers (I know - they
| weren't too skinny?).
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Kafka is another.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> or passed away_
|
| A certain one-eared Dutchman comes to mind...
| mmooss wrote:
| Somewhere online I saw photos of where The Dutchman lived
| while creating some of the paintings - dirty, dreary,
| lifeless, depresssing places. To see that all around and to
| imagine and create the mini-worlds in those painting - with
| their vivid, wild use of color and texture - is wondrous and
| wonderful.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think he sort of lived in his own world. He was def
| pretty neurodivergent, in some way.
|
| I [sort of] remember a movie, once, that had a kid
| basically doing a "Don Quixote" on the world, where his
| vision of everything was kind of wondrous.
|
| Don't remember it well enough to recall its name, though...
| lutharvaughn wrote:
| If you are actually making it for yourself then it shouldn't
| matter. I think sometimes people tell themselves they are doing
| it for them, but then they start thinking "well what would so
| and so think". I know I've done it, but once I started actually
| making things for me, I could feel the difference.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Making people something for software rather than helping them
| interact healthily with real people in their surroundings feels
| irresponsible at this point in time, given all the damage social
| media, short form videos, and the rest have done to the world at
| large.
| jamesgill wrote:
| I agree with the title, but disagree with this:
|
| _" When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating
| something that makes people go "wow" are reduced quite a bit. It
| isn't a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make
| inspiring software."_
|
| The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go
| 'wow'; it's to help them with their _jobs to be done_. That 's
| it. The software is always in service to the job the user wants
| to get done. Can that make them go 'wow'? Sure, but you
| can't..aim for 'wow'. That's the wrong goal.
|
| As far as 'inspiration' goes, I'm with Stephen King: "Amateurs
| sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go
| to work."
|
| For those that might disagree (hey, it's HN), I would ask: how do
| you know when 'wow' occurs? Here's a clue: 'wow' can only happen
| when something _else_ occurs first. That 'something else' is
| described above.
| robin_reala wrote:
| That's overly reductive. You're making a CRUD app? Absolutely.
| You're programming a new effect for a laser setup in a club?
| Less so.
| bandofthehawk wrote:
| Even in the case of a CRUD app, I think it's not bad to aim
| for a wow. Like "with this new feature, I'll no longer need
| to do x, y, and z repetitive tasks, great!"
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The purpose of software for other people is not to make them
| go 'wow'; it's to help them with their jobs to be done._
|
| Aside from where you've only duplicated something that already
| exists (in which case why bother?), what kind of software would
| you be able to create to help me do my job that wouldn't also
| make me go 'wow'?
|
| Any part of my job that I lack tools to help me with are the
| parts that seem impossible to have the tools for, so when you
| defy that understanding, 'wow' is inevitable.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| > Aside from where you've only duplicated something that
| already exists (in which case why bother?)
|
| If we had stopped reiterating on the wheel our cars would
| drive on wooden logs.
| 9rx wrote:
| Of course, a wheel doesn't duplicate a wooden log. The
| wheel most certainly 'wow'-ed people when it was first
| introduced.
|
| But if you release a wheel today, same as any other wheel
| you can already buy, don't expect much fanfare.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| My point (and that of the previous poster) is that "wow"
| isn't required as an initial property to do anything.
| Pretty sure the dude who made the first wheel just did
| something that was useful for him in that situation. He
| didn't think how he could do something to impress his
| peers. He maybe wasn't even aware he made the first wheel
| or something innovative.
|
| Also if I'd dive into how F1 wheels are made, I'd expect
| I learn stuff that is fascinating and far from boring.
| 9rx wrote:
| The question asked -- paraphrasing to include the context
| you have added -- is how you could create something like
| a wheel, or a novel adaptation on the wheel like an F1
| wheel, without sparking 'wow'? It just doesn't seem
| impossible. You may not come with the intent to create
| 'wow', but it is going to happen anyway.
| Yokohiii wrote:
| I am confused on your use of "duplicating".
|
| I think straight duplication is quite unlikely. You even
| say it's inevitable. Which is also confusing. Most code
| written is probably quite unremarkable, yet useful.
| Usefulness is a dominating factor, wow has a lot of
| depends.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I think straight duplication is quite unlikely._
|
| Is it? There are many different people selling wheels
| that are all pretty much indistinguishable from one
| another. The first one no doubt brought the 'wow'. But
| when the second person showed up with the same thing,
| what 'wow' would there be?
|
| Our entire system of trade assumes that duplication
| occurs as an intrinsic piece, with the only defining
| difference in that duplication is the effort to make the
| same thing for cheaper. Otherwise known as competition.
| Are you suggesting that doesn't happen?
| Yokohiii wrote:
| I am stuck with your phrasing. Duplication is for me
| something like cloning or a perfect copy. Which I think
| is unusual. You will find a chinese phone that looks like
| an iPhone but is totally different and magnitudes
| cheaper. What you talk about is probably more like
| mimicking. Offering something that people are used to to
| get into the market. But every competitor will eventually
| look for things to make a brand or product different.
| What is inevitable, is to diverge from mimicry. So
| duplicating is an evolutionary process itself.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I don't know what you are disagreeing with. Your thoughts are
| somewhat of a non-sequitur.
|
| > The purpose of software for other people is not to make them
| go 'wow' ... The software is always in service to the job the
| user wants to get done. Can that make them go 'wow'? Sure, but
| you can't..aim for 'wow'. That's the wrong goal.
|
| Did he say in his post that he's talking about software for
| other people? Is the only purpose of writing software to do so
| for others?
| barrenko wrote:
| Craft software that makes _you_ feel something.
| runtimepanic wrote:
| The Zelda example is a good reminder that emotion in software
| often comes from consistency and responsiveness. Those games feel
| immersive because the underlying systems behave predictably,
| inputs map cleanly to actions, and the world reacts without
| friction. That same principle applies to non-game software too:
| tight feedback loops and coherent internal rules make tools feel
| "alive" in a way users notice even if they can't articulate it.
| flemins wrote:
| Does anger count?
| rkomorn wrote:
| Not if you want to stand out from the crowd.
| brailsafe wrote:
| This is what my nostalgia for native macos editors rests on. I've
| wanted to buy Coda despite VSCode and other derivatives being
| more productive, and where would editors now be without BBEdit,
| Textmate, Espresso/CSS Edit, which all did particular things very
| well, given the constraints at the time.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Lots of software is crafted to make me feel rage
| nchmy wrote:
| JIRA makes people feel something
| hellorashid wrote:
| case in point: the lil mouse-snakey-animation-thing on your
| homepage is _excessively_ satisfying and making me feel lots of
| things
| pvtmert wrote:
| This was one of the best & heartfelt blog posts I have read on
| the HN so far.
|
| I can relate because of 2 things; 1. I also played a lot of legos
| during my childhood & loved it. 2. I have a similar "preference"
| on configurations & shell-profile. (ie. overall setup)
|
| At work, I am the only person who has a personal configuration &
| automation package (ie. dotfiles) at my director's level
| organization. (Maybe there is another one or two at most)
|
| Not only that, I also have a nearly complete automation to
| provision a new machine, virtual or otherwise using the same
| code. (usually maintained by make && make install)
|
| I update things regularly. It has bunch of "utility" scripts. As
| it being a $FAANG company, once in a while, here and there,
| people stumble on scripts/solutions/docs (also markdown). There
| were even occasional CRs (code-reviews / pull-requests) I
| received.
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