[sofon]

It's probably not very bad, but stupid experiments can have a negative influence on the community as a whole.

Let's say e-ink keyboards are a good idea, but it's too soon. An early implementation will quite possibly delay (more make completely unviable) trying the experiment again.

If it's just a bad idea, resources will have been diverted into the development of a failed product (which is years of someones life spent on something useless). Not only that, but the cost of trying other ideas is increased. You have to hire and train more developers to work on other projects, to make up for the time wasted. The cost of developers increases for other companies, perhaps trying out better ideas.

This particular instance probably isn't very significant. But people apply the same logic to "what's the harm in VCs funding blockchains for pets", or any other buzzword without really understanding it. Well the harm is that they shift the entire ecosystem toward something that is possibly not very useful. They increase the costs for other companies (perhaps bootstrapping) their own ideas. And they push us toward a market that is driven by buzzwords, not logic, which is where most of us end up working.

[maxerickson]

This presumes we can choose the right path without mistakes. It's a silly presumption.

And I think it's fine to be frustrated with stupid VC spending, but to the extent it is actually a problem, it shouldn't be sustainable (it would be replaced by less stupid spending if it were truly enjoining advancement).

[sofon]

I agree, we can't proceed without mistakes. But it's incorrect to say that there is no cost, and that we shouldn't minimise mistakes (which is what the comment I was replying to was implying).

The VC stuff... I'm not sure that it's not sustainable. The way VCs are selected is not totally efficient (I would say, not even very efficient). More than that, successful exits for VCs don't always mean that a product or service provided value to the world at large (or was a good use for limited engineering talent), there are lots of ways for a VC to get a successful exit without that happening (including a follow on investing giving them liquidity, before there is even a product on the market for example, or the company being acquired without having developed anything useful).

[maxerickson]

I said more than "not sustainable", I said that if it is really a problem, it wouldn't be sustainable.

If they are wasting tons of money then they probably aren't the thing limiting advancement.

[sofon]

I don't see how that follows. They don't just waste money, they redirect resources that could be deployed better elsewhere.

[maxerickson]

If the money is there to waste, you have some evidence that no one has a better idea about how to deploy the resources.

There's the problem of what "better" should mean, but private investors aren't going to fund government for fun (or similar), so many of the alternative meanings of better can't really be expected to inform a discussion about private investment. Like maybe stupid VC spending is evidence that tech companies aren't getting taxed enough, but that is solved by raising taxes, not by hand-wringing over questionable products.

[sofon]

Why? VCs might just be not very good at selecting good plays?