[tombert]

A long time ago Simon Peyton Jones said Haskell tries to "avoid success at all costs".

He was being cheeky, but it honestly is how I try and approach most of what I do that isn't directly related to my employment (as a software person).

My blog posts are just for me; I don't market them, I don't expect anyone else to read them, I don't spam links to all my friends every time I post anything.

I have no idea if my writing could make any money in any universe, but since it's not my source of income I don't want to be beholden any kind of "monetization incentives".

[nine_k]

In must be noted that it should parse as (avoid (success at all costs)), not (avoid success)(at all costs).

That is, losing integrity for the sake of success is what's to be avoided, not success itself.

[throwaway201606]

I appreciate this clarrification comment: had originally read this as option B and was wondering "why would they say this?"

[sodapopcan]

I always read it as option b as well. I figured it meant they wanted to avoid the "too many cooks" problems that plagues all popular languages, and especially avoid extreme pressure from powerful "clients" to make specific changes. IE, was about control.

But ya, now that I see nine_k's comment, option makes a lot of sense.

[projektfu]

Me too, but I think it means to avoid being constrained by success, like Python 2.

Elm took this a little to far.

[tombert]

I always took it as "make the 'best' decision [1] without regard for whether or not it's going to be popular or make the language more business-friendly".

[1] however you choose to define "best"

[cl4ptr4p]

> Haskell tries to "avoid success at all costs".

I wonder whether one could say the same about Zig these days. The maintainers conspicuously avoid to employ the usual methods for popularizing a new language that others seem to take for granted. Although I'm not (yet?) a user of Zig, I rather enjoy this different approach where quality (in the maintainers' view) outweighs quantity.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Same here.

I also write software for free, but it’s not a cry in the dark. It’s serious, ship-grade software, released into the App Store, and used by thousands.

It’s just not designed to make money.

[inigyou]

I'd seriously suggest charging money for anything in the app store to offset the money it costs to publish in the app store. You can also offer a free version on your own website.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yeah, but it's a long story. I do it for a very specific reason. I'm retired, and don't need the money. It's enjoyable, and many people benefit.

[ares623]

Software engineers, or at least the well compensated ones, are living proof that some level of UBI is beneficial. Look at all the works we have collectively created just because we don't have to worry about basic needs and actually have enough time and energy left to do the things we care about. Imagine if other professions had such luxury. Teachers in particular I'm very curious about.

I also think that the Cambrian explosion age of FOSS will soon be over, now that well compensated software engineers are a dying breed.

[otabdeveloper4]

FOSS is a legal and political tool that removes catastrophic dependency risk.

It's not something that exists simply because software developers had free time to waste.

[inigyou]

You can have commercial software with source or with reverse engineering rights. You can also just illegally reverse engineer it anyway - only matters if you get caught, and companies will only suffer civil penalties (fines).

FOSS is now mostly sponsored by commercial enterprises. The part that isn't sponsored is dying or has died. Linux was a silly project by one guy, where are projects like that now?

[ghaff]

There are a lot of FOSS projects that aren't sponsored in a major way by corporations: LibreOffice, SQLite, the Linux desktop interfaces, a number of languages... I won't claim that corporations don't support those and others at all. Yes, many are attached to foundations for solid governance reasons. But there are many popular projects that largely exist outside of major corporate backing--especially direct financial support (as opposed to letting some engineers be involved part-time.

[tikhonj]

There are still a lot of smaller totally independent projects like this. I suspect that there are more—far more—just-for-fun projects today than in past decades in absolute terms.

I love Haskell, I've spent a lot of time in the general area around functional programming, types, proofs and PL, and there is still a vibrant community with lots of amazing non-commercial projects there. I'm sure the same is true in other areas of the programming world.

Ditto for the Emacs world. Emacs and its package ecosystem are amazing, better than they've ever been, and ≈entirely driven by non-commercial work.

Same for a big chunk of NixOS, although there's also been some real commercial investment there now.

I never really thought about it before writing this comment, but, except for games, most of the software I use and care about is primarily community-driven rather than commercial. And it's absolutely great.

Despite smaller communities and low monetary investment, a remarkable number of things about Haskell and Emacs and Nix are simply better than any commercial alternative, full stop.

The problem isn't that this kind of software has died—it's thriving more than ever—but just that the rest of the field has grown around it even faster. Programming is so commercially valuable that there has been a ton of investment in it and now we have millions of people for whom it's just a career, and trillions of dollars pouring into companies powered, primarily, by programming. It's a wild time. The overall feel of the field is definitely different now, but you can still find classic hacker enclaves. You just have to cut through the noise first.

[codazoda]

I would argue a large percentage of us are creatives and that might have driven us to software engineering. That’s the case for me, at least. I love many other creative things but selected software for my job.

[flir]

Commonplace book. Mine just happens to be (theoretically) public.

(This takes a lot of pressure off - I publish notes, half-finished thoughts, stuff I'll "get around to later" with no shame).

[tombert]

As a rule, I only write stuff if I feel like I have an opinion or take on something that isn't very common. I've abandoned half-written posts because I realized that I am not saying anything particularly unique or interesting, and I don't really see the point of writing about it.

Granted, being uninteresting has never really stopped me from writing long comments on HN...

[agumonkey]

I guess success can have different meanings, short term trend-chasing success or long-term principled mature success ?