Hacker News Reader

Comment by thanatropism | Hacker News Reader

... and this is a prime example of the "developer ergonomics" v. "end-user needs" trade-off that was being discussed a few days ago re: web frameworks.

I mean, it's very well possible that the long-term investment in expanding the "base" of willing coders is worth the short-term loss in productivity. But even long-term investments in human capital need better planning than just "hey, I bet a high-schooler could deal with this simple accounting spreadsheet; that would train him even if it takes him a day to fix what I can fix in ten minutes". It's fine investing in high-schoolers, sure, but that's not the point.

View on HN

What is the point?

The point is that the tradeoff between making things at optimal productivity and using thing-making as an educational opportunity exists.

The OP's initiative may come at an excellent cost-benefit price, but it's questionable whether they even considered the tradeoff. And if they have, it's still important to discuss it if it comes to an internet forum.

It was pointed out in the article and he did consider it.

" Now, could I have finished it quicker and moved on my way if I’d just done it myself? Of course. But that’s not what it’s all about as an open source contributor. It’s fun delivering good software that helps other people, but also realize that there are tons of people out there who just don’t know where to get started.

Some of you may be asking yourself, “what if I (and other lib users) don’t want to wait days for the feature?” From my experience, people are eager to try it out. At least one PR (sometimes several) is submitted, iterated on, and merged within a matter of a few hours. "

He already had the implementation ready, but choose to not push it to github in order to encourrage participation.

Clearly, productivity was not a priority.

Today's productivity wasn't a priority for the author, but tomorrow's productivity is the goal.

edit: A proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com