[_sdegutis]

Fun little story, I used to be sympathetic to the all software sucks movement and attitude. Then I tried to port `st` (simple terminal) to Mac OS X by separating its core from its X11-dependent code and pulling the globals into a single struct, so that I could wrap it with NSView. When I tried to ask the `st` community if they wanted my changes[1], they replied that these changes were unnecessary, that coupling the core with X11 was perfectly fine, and especially that there's no reason to port it to such an awful non-free OS as Apple's. I now prefer to take a constructive and positive approach to software development, instead of just having a negative or cynical attitude.

[1] https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1408/23366.html

[raffomania]

I can't believe how rude the comments in this thread were. I generally agree that we have too much complexity in software, but I also feel that often people take the "minimal" software notion to an extreme level of elitism, excluding and attacking people for reasons not related to the original goal to make better software.

[52-6F-62]

You weren't exaggerating! I was curious and had to stop after a little while.

They don't sound like happy people.

[exikyut]

Wow, this flamewar could win a few awards...

It progresses toward constructiveness near the end of the thread though, FWIW, so it's worth reading through if you want sort-of-closure I guess.

My only disagreement is with the one person who said that the other people in the group were strongly-opinionated and that it was "healthy". No. Some of the messages in this thread are deeply insulting personal attacks and simply inappropriate to ever submit anywhere.

That you managed to stay focused is impressive. I fear I would have spent _way_ too long on, shall we say, an "appropriate" reply. Actually I might've just up and left, heh.

I appreciate the TIL regarding a community to call out and avoid. Yes, people like the ones found in this thread are everywhere, but to paraphrase something I said on a similar subject recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17730570, see parent comments for context), I have no inclination to field the signal/noise ratio to engage communities where such people are majority vocal. With such people, it seems you have two options - argue against their views and suffer the continuous backlash; or implicitly agree by not arguing, and risk the potential expectation to behave contrary to your personal standards as a result. Alternatively, one simply avoids them, or calls them out.

HN's moderation does a reasonably good job of eliminating such contention. As time goes by I continue to find new ways to appreciate the carefully-curated status quo here. It's certainly not perfect (particularly the automated post-killing system, which kills a small but noteworthy number of good posts) but at least I never have to drown in distraction and meta basically ever, and I have showdead on so I can read the dead comments (and, most importantly, read with the expectation that they might be inflammatory so there's less surprise), so it's pretty good.

[_sdegutis]

> I fear I would have spent _way_ too long on, shall we say, an "appropriate" reply.

When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.

> I appreciate the TIL regarding a community to call out and avoid.

This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.

> With such people, it seems you have two options - argue against their views and suffer the continuous backlash; or implicitly agree by not arguing, and risk the potential expectation to behave contrary to your personal standards as a result.

Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.

> HN's moderation does a reasonably good job

Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community. cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"

[exikyut]

[Rearranging the replies a bit:]

> This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.

Ah. Duly noted, thanks.

> Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.

> When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.

Thanks for this, particularly the first sentence. I'm still learning to mentally model behavior so I can understand the thinking behind a given form of expression, and in turn how I should respond appropriately to it. Now to just learn how to actually quieten down in these settings... :)

> Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community.

For better or worse, I'm really glad I was having slow internet a couple years ago and went "alright what's the URL of that really barebones website again, that'll probably be usably fast" :D

The SnR here is probably the reason I like the place so much; reddit is full of _so much fluff_. Hm, maybe the reason people say they come here for the comments is not so much because the comments will have exactly the thing they want to read but because they're not full of distractions...

> cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"

Okay, this is one of my new favorite quotes, ha!

[simias]

I use dwm, st and slock myself so I'm definitely grateful for the suckless people but it's true that their arrogant attitude is often silly, unwarranted and counterproductive. I also find that they often mistake terseness for elegance and simplicity, while their code is decent it's far from the best C code I've ever encountered (apparently tests and comments are not part of the philosophy). Their fetishization of C is also ridiculous, they actually advise using C instead of a shell script to set the dvm status bar because it's more minimalistic that way. Since you'll probably want to read a bunch of /proc and /sys entries and/or call third party programs I don't really see why anybody would think C is more appropriate than /bin/sh.

But hey, I'll still take that over "what's wrong with Electron apps anyway?".

Just do what I do: fork their code and never even consider contributing anything back since you'll probably get shut down anyway.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

suckless and cat-v have some intersection, but are distinct groups. A lot of suckless software frankly sucksmore.

[barbs]

That FRIGN guy really needs to get off his high-horse and learn how to treat people with respect.

[trampi]

Wow, the replys are really a disappointing read. I would not have stay that calm.

[Raphael_Amiard]

Wow, just read the thread, looks like the stereotype of a toxic community...