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by xyz-x 2247 days ago
> Exactly. Look, here's what I think happened here: You looked at this page, you saw the silly marketing, and your "gut feeling" told you that this guy is an amateur who needed to be put in his place. So then you started seeking out details that you could criticize as amateurish.

Again, I'm not attacking you as a person or your work, I'm attacking the shoddy copy. But yes, this whole thread is about what the first impression of your web site is like, and it's amateurish. Perhaps you're someone who can live with that, and how that results in lost conversions (?) from visits, maybe you're not. In any case, from running businesses myself, I know that getting clear and honest feedback is worth its weight in gold.

> instead of actually digging into every detail in depth

Which is precisely my point that I won't do. If you can't communicate clearly to your visitors on their first visit, but expect them to dig into the details, you've lost that battle.

> For example, you assumed that KJ promises don't use monadic control flow, when they most emphatically do. How did you get there? You looked at some code and found one example that didn't happen to use the monadic flow.

Again, what I found has nothing to do with you. I'm yet to actually have seen the examples you mention in your docs, and the pages I've linked to and the calculator sample doesn't show your statements to be true (only based on that). Perhaps, instead of being so tounge-in-cheek on your introduction page, you assume the visitor is not an amateur, and show what you got (you can move the funny bits to after the introduction, when the reader is in on the joke)?

> The "Return" message from each call serves as an application-level acknowledgment that the message has been received and processed. This is enough information for the sender to maintain a send window that places an upper bound on buffer bloat.

THIS; is what kind of copy you could use. Also not using a confusing `Data` record name, which conflates L4 and L7 semantics (even if that data is identical to memory of a record), not using `my-` prefixed variables, but building a use-case like "suppose this was for streaming music", or something.

If uptake is an aim, focusing much more on other languages than C++ is probably wise, too. And some diagrams to explain what trade-offs have been made (can you load-balance CapNProto like you can gRPC? Is -Proto, Protobuf, so I can use an existing schema registry in my "enterprise"? Is it safe, "like HTTP2" — the newbie stuff in relation to the world around you).

> Cool, I just hit the 30-year mark myself.

Time flies, eh? ;)

> But my advice for you is, next time, try to recognize when you don't actually know the details, and then try to assume the best possible details, or at least ask questions, rather than assuming the worst.

I'm aware I don't know the details! I've said so repeatedly; if I read the details while I have a conversation about how someone who's never encountered Cap'n Proto before, reacts to its material, I'm not that person anymore.

From the above person's perspective, you have a bit of a problem with marketing; I've actually bounced off your front page about three times the last six (maybe?) years and the copy/messaging has always put me off. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Just ping me if you actually do like having someone review that copy for you.

1 comments

> lost conversions

I'm not selling anything. This isn't a business.

> I've actually bounced off your front page about three times the last six (maybe?) years and the copy/messaging has always put me off.

Working as intended. :)