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donut :alpine: :xfce: :clj:

@maxc @noa @blacklight

Kitschy, narrow minded suckless software and hacker poser aesthetics go hand in hand.

Patch email based contributions feels like “no we need to use Git the way it was designed, because it’s an option and it exists” kinda mentality.

IME, I see a very significant gulf in “give a damn level” between devs I work with who are paid, and fossbros.

Paid devs tend to use the tool that is paid for or provided. They are usually impatient.

Fossbros adore THIS kind of stuff.

16 Oct 2022 at 16:01 | Wall-to-wall | Open on fosstodon.org
3 comments
donut :alpine: :xfce: :clj:

@maxc @noa @blacklight

Which is to say,

I think there is a non trivial relationship between how niche and convoluted or “suckless/hacker/simple/streamlined” a software setup is,

And how little it’s going to get used by people who actually have deadlines, pay stubs and other projects and responsibilities on the docket.

It’s the difference between seeing a hand drill as a drill; and seeing a drill as a beautiful machine that needs to be pared down to its best design and reforged ad nauseum.

16 Oct 2022 at 16:03 | Open on fosstodon.org
Fabio Manganiello

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa as a former uber-minimalist myself, I agree with your conclusions.

When 12 years ago I redesigned my whole personal website to have a bash-like interface (blash), and built a CMS (nullBB) for forums that didn't allow images at all (instead, it would calculate the edges of pictures through Sobel maps and render them as ASCII art), I wasn't aiming to build something that people could use easily, or quickly be productive with.

Most of these projects don't fall into the "programming for a functional purpose" category (heck, configuring many of those projects requires editing a config.h file and recompiling the source code). They are more in the "programming as a form of art", or as a statement, category.

More than ten years down the line, I'd be tempted to say that enough of this art has been made, and enough of these statements have been made, so they're not even original anymore. If in 2022 one considers accessible and intuitive UIs and stylesheet mastering as disposable skills, then they're just bad web developers.

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa as a former uber-minimalist myself, I agree with your conclusions.

When 12 years ago I redesigned my whole personal website to have a bash-like interface (blash), and built a CMS (nullBB) for forums that didn't allow images at all (instead, it would calculate the edges of pictures through Sobel maps and render them as ASCII art), I wasn't aiming to build something that people could use easily, or quickly be productive with.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:25 | Open on social.platypush.tech
Fabio Manganiello

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa it's a bit like the niche category of esoteric programming languages. Nobody would scold you for entertaining yourself with some small scripts in BrainFuck, LOLCODE, Shakespeare or Whitespace in your spare time. But if you start believing that those should be taken seriously as programming languages, and that all the patterns that made programming easier and more accessible over the past decades are bad, then we have a problem.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:31 | Open on social.platypush.tech
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