[catchmilk]

> In no way is this a comparison to the Altwork Station, which has ten years of development, five generations of prototypes, and three generations of production hardware, all adding up to 80,000 hours of design and engineering. The creations themselves are apples and oranges...

Off-topic: Am I being overly sensitive today or could Altwork have responded better to this?

Don't get me wrong, I love the write-up going through the different prototypes, it was very insightful. But the above paragraph seems very defensive. Paul in no way attacked Altwork, merely stated that their products are beyond his budget at the moment. Instead of saying that Paul's DIY project is "in no way a comparison" to Altwork's products, they could have commended Paul on taking this project on in the first place, highlighting the difficulties it comes with and how their product solves them. Just seemed unnecessarily defensive.

[che303]

Sorry if it came off defensive, it was supposed to be a compliment to Paul and recognition of the different stages of the projects. I didn't see it as Paul attacking us in any way. I added that line because I was worried that someone would think I was attacking Paul's work. Paul was clear about what he was doing, his limited tools and limited budget. Further, as someone who builds hardware, I know how tough it is to get anything to work at all but I also know not everyone get that.

[polote]

Hey I'm the "Paul" you are talking about, I agree with you that the way the sentence was written could mean bad.

But honestly I don't think it is the case, I've talked with the CEO of Altwork a few weeks ago and honestly he was very nice and even helped me to improve a few parts of my setup.

I take the sentence as a mark of respect, but yeah could have been written in a less confusing way

[che303]

Thanks for mentioning that Paul. The sentence was meant as a sign of respect. It was great to talk to you too.

[richthegeek]

I think it highlights something that is common in software engineering in general: it's incredibly easy to forget how much of development time is ultimately R&D.

Paul benefited from Altwork's ten years of development, protoypes, 80,000 hours bla bla bla. The existence of the Altwork station and especially the 3-8 generations means that Paul could essentially avoid all the ergonomic decisions and many of the technical ones too... until he comes across something that doesn't work for him. But it saves a lot of time having something to crib from!

In some ways this is like a code refactor - different tools, aiming to make it cheaper/more efficient, but using the R&D knowledge from previous iterations. Given the state of the software industry I'm just glad he didn't get tempted to use Svelte somehow.

[formerly_proven]

That one sentence like you quoted it might be interpreted like that. But there is no way to read this sentence like that with the context intact.

[herodoturtle]

Completely agree with you.