[remon]

HN is inundated with posts announcing paper thin abstractions on top of existing technology or utilities that just move the goalpost of what you knowledge you need to be effective. It's a weird trend that seems almost entirely motivated by people wanting open source projects in their resume, or seek funding if its a startup.

[neilotoole]

> It's a weird trend that seems almost entirely motivated by people wanting open source projects in their resume

Developer here. I can't speak to what you see as the weird trend, but I can speak about sq's history:

- I created the first version of sq circa 2013 as my own personal dev tool to address some pain points (amongst other things: getting JSON out of various DBs from the command line in a consistent manner, and wanting an easy way to inspect DB schemas, i.e. "sq inspect")

- It was starting to be a minor PITA dealing with colleagues asking for the latest revision of the tool, so I open-sourced it. In 2016 or so I think?

- sq is FL/OSS and will remain so, no funding is sought, not even one of those "buy me a coffee" thingies

- I didn't create this HN post about sq, nor do I know the person who did. But thanks for sq's 15 mins of fame, kind stranger

[syndicatedjelly]

Thank you for creating a composable, simple to grok Unix tool. sq is an example of what is so great about the Unix philosophy.

Personally, I can see a spot for sq in my developer toolbox. Instead of reaching for DBeaver’s bloated interface, or psql’s perplexing TUI, I like the idea of picking up an sq multitool to answer some simple questions quickly about my databases.

Thanks again!

[dlisboa]

> It's a weird trend that seems almost entirely motivated by people wanting open source projects in their resume

That’s really harsh and misguided. If people didn’t do “paper thin abstractions” projects on their own time for the simple pleasure of doing it we wouldn’t have 90% of the successful projects we have today.

Let people have fun and don’t judge their motives when they’re making something Open Source. I can guarantee the person just thought “this would be cool to have” and implemented it.

[6LLvveMx2koXfwn]

Unless you're the GP your guarantee about the persons motivation is as meaningless as the post you're replying to.

[neilotoole]

I'm not GP, but I am the sq developer.

> the person just thought “this would be cool to have” and implemented it.

Correct. This is true of much OSS, or at least I've always suspected so.

[ddispaltro]

I think his point is that we should treat something given freely, charitably

[EGreg]

Charitably?

This! Is! HN!

[raydev]

Thankfully that doesn't apply to this post. sq is a great, full-featured tool.

[WhitneyLand]

What a cynical take. Most people working on side projects do so because they find them interesting or useful rather than to just score resume points.

They’re not moving anyone’s goalposts all usage is voluntary.

The fact that HN is mentioned is also confusing. If something had no value beyond paper thin abstraction I doubt we’d be seeing it on the front page with 500 votes.

Even if this project turned out to be less than hoped it seems counterproductive to complain about people creating and exploring. It’s a good thing to see and natural selection will do any sorting needed.