Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

"More modern" is a euphemism for "not made by someone who had a gray beard in 1975". It's just another form of ageism.

Even by that criteria, there's EDN, which is basically sexp with more built-in types (and extensibility).

Being 'more modern' means Mark takes a JS-first or web-first approach in its design. Whether we like it or not, JS has dominated the web. JSON is successful, partly because it takes a JS-first approach. Mark inherits this approach.

The only ageist thing here is that you assumed the author's age, or that it had anything to do with the claim of modernity.

Your statement is factually incorrect.

It's sad that you feel that improving older, outdated technologies is a form of ageism.

It is sad that so much junior talent is wasted on attempts at improvement via blind reiteration. This is one possible consequence of a mentorship vacuum: bright minds look for challenges, even ones that have been adequately overcome long ago. Imagine the good that would come of directing such energy with a clear purpose.

There is nothing sad in that. Yes, it might be non-optimal, but by trying out your own approach you will find out its limitations first-hand and understand the problem and reasoning behind alternate approaches much better.

Junior talent doesn't become senior talent by just doing the right things, but by doing the wrong things and learning from them.

Junior talent becomes senior talent by virtue of acquiring experience. Doing the wrong things and learning is one way of acquiring experience, but being directed by a mentor is a much more efficient and productive way of acquiring that seniority. A lot of lessons learned from reinventing wheels can be distilled down into a conversation or a pair programming session, but in the absence of senior leadership, it becomes a week long hacking session on a library that will ultimately rot in Git forever because it's foundationally unsound.

It becomes interesting when later said library is picked up and put into production by similar novices.

Yup. There really is nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel for educational purposes. The problem starts when that reinvented wheel gains a good README/webpage, and gets picked up by an ecosystem driven by novices.

>Yes, it might be non-optimal, but by trying out your own approach you will find out its limitations first-hand and understand the problem and reasoning behind alternate approaches much better.

Hmm... I think that’s how PHP was made.

The problem here is that "modern" is usually a justification for regression, relative to older technologies, usually done by people who never bothered to look at the old technologies before declaring them obsolete.

Reminds me of a recent talk at FOSDEM based on this premise.

The circuit less traveled. Investigating some alternate histories of computing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlERSVSDl7Y

Wow, that was a surprisingly insightful talk; thanks for linking!

I'm intrigued in particular by the talk's conclusion about (I guess, again) disappearing distinction between volatile and non-volatile storage. To date, I've been a vocal advocate of hierarchical filesystems (not UNIX, but just as a unit of user-facing abstraction). The talk sent me on the way of reflecting whether I'm not just supporting another historical "wrong path". Lots of more thinking in front of me here. So thanks.

"Mark" does not improve on anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com