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Copying my comment from lobste.rs in case you didn't see it: I really appreciate this attitude. As programmers, we love to complain and grumble to each other about how the state of things suck, or that things are over complicated, but then too often the response is the software engineering equivalent of “I paid my student loans, so you should have to, too”. A new person joins the project, and WTFs at something, and the traumatized veterans say, “haha oh boy welcome, yeah everything sucks! You’ll get used to it soon.” I hate that attitude. We are at the very, very beginning of software protocols that could potentially last for millennia. From that perspective, you would look back at this situation and think of Richard’s blog post as super obvious, the clear voice of reason, and the reaction of everyone here as myopic. Even if our software protocols for whatever reason don’t last that long, we need to be working on reducing global system complexity. Beauty and elegance aside, there is such a thing as complexity budget which is limited by the laws of information theory, the computer science equivalent of the laws of physics. People like Richard understand this intuitively, and actively work towards reconstructing our world to regain complexity currency so that it can be spent on more productive things. I would have backed you 100%. |
Specifically, I'm referring to your new guy example here. The new guy usually very correctly identifies that things suck, what he lacks is perspective. This means that both his priorities will be off, as well as his approaches. Trust the gripe, not the advice.
This is also I think what people in this thread are/were generally about here. Not because Richard would be some new unknown kid on the block mind you, but because our grandchildren having to deal with CRLF is approximately as harrowing as the eventual heat death of the universe, and because instead of standards revisions, he was calling for standards violations.