Comment by ChromaticPanic
1 day ago
Too many programmers think they have a unique use case without considering that maybe the existing projects are bloated for a reason. Then they end up just recreating the same bloat.
1 day ago
Too many programmers think they have a unique use case without considering that maybe the existing projects are bloated for a reason. Then they end up just recreating the same bloat.
Gall's Law:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
Gall's Law almost always deserves to be repeated and higher up in HN threads, and this is another instance where I wish I could upvote more than once.
Here, Gall's Law provides an accurate explanation for why so many of us have returned to paper, pencil, and brain cells. It is also apropos of your comment's sibling comment regarding how tech folks frequently and mistakenly believe that they can improve on a solution that has worked well for thousands of years of human civilization (e.g., paper + writing instrument + human thought) in just a few weeks. For all the talk of Emacs's being relatively ancient and mature software, handwriting is orders of magnitude more mature and sanded down.
With software to "solve" the problems of thinking, remembering, linking ideas, or deciding what to do … now you have two problems, as we say.
"Surely I can do it better in a few weeks than all preceding civilizational knowledge" is probably the most popular tech entrepreneur stereotype.
The existing projects probably have crap docs then. If I build it myself at least I’m likely to understand it.
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