Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by arp242 2189 days ago
e.g. https://lobste.rs/s/j1gl4t/sourcehut_prohibits_repos_with_la...

Both the original story as well as the comments regarding Andrew's usage for Zig.

1 comments

That doesn't sound abrasive at all to me. It's just a normal technical disagreement. What am I missing?
You don't think it's strange for a service provider to tell people that "mercurial isn't suitable for this" (even though it clearly works, and has been working for many years) and "you're writing your program wrong"?

It's fine to not support certain use cases because it's too much effort or otherwise too expensive. It's not fine to, as a service provider, tell people that their programs are (and I quote) "wrong".

If you're okay with that then that's your choice, but for me it really turned me off sourcehut.

> You don't think it's strange for a service provider to tell people that "mercurial isn't suitable for this" (even though it clearly works, and has been working for many years) and "you're writing your program wrong"?

No, not really, if done politely. Which seems to be the case here.

It also might "work" to use a large crystal vase as a hammer, but it's still "doing it wrong".

If anything, I'd fault sr.ht for having too vague usage policies and then telling users they are in violation of said policies. That's not good. But they are in alpha, so hopefully it's something that'll improve.

No, because mercurial really isn't suitable for this. Nor is Git for that matter.

Similar thing happened on Github with CocoaPods: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11245652.

It works, so it's suitable.
If I duct tape you to a car seat it will work just like a seat belt.

Just because something works doesn't mean it is a suitable implementation or a sensible decision.

No. That's one reason we have separate words for things that work and things that are suitable.
It doesn't (and didn't at the time) sound abrasive to me, either.