All software sucks (2011)
harmful.cat-v.org
harmful.cat-v.org
If this table is not meant as pure bait then I think it's actually harmful on its own, an experienced dev will be able to pick the right tool for the right job on their own. On the other hand a beginner will be tempted to cargo cult it to seem hardcore without understanding the tradeoffs.
Sometimes it's simpler to reuse a complex solution than write your own simple code from scratch. It's easier and simpler to use C++'s std::map than implement a red-black tree from scratch in C.
Agreed. Especially with the GPL and LGPL, etc being "harmful". That seems like they're trying to evoke an emotional response.
Sure, if there's different software I should use instead of $popular_X , I'm all ears. But be aware, there's context switching costs from going to one to another. And some software, even being worse, has better support by the community.
Im going to flag this article, for your complaints. It's not constructive, and spawns flame-y yelling.
Could you elaborate on that? From what I've heard (in my echo chamber), NFS is "complex, slow, and unreliable" while 9P2000 is "simple, fast, and reliable".
Fast != good. A slower system which works more reliably and elegantly is often (usually) a better choice.
>awk intead of ruby
I agree with this, though it's expressed poorly. For use-cases within the intersection of awk and ruby, use awk. For use-cases without, you probably shouldn't use ruby anyway.
>It's easier and simpler to use C++'s std::map than implement a red-black tree from scratch in C.
Easier, yes, simpler, no. When you use C++ you get all of the baggage that comes with it, increasing your complexity hugely.
Edit: I'd seen this page before, but never really appreciated the sheer arrogance of it until now. It's troll bait.
I'm a huge fan of SQL, but curious what pitfalls CSV has.
And the related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796268
Technically there is RFC4180[1], but yeah, CSV has a lot of flavours. I remember a story about how Excel couldn't correctly open a CSV file because it had a header that had "ID" as the first field name, and Excel's file format sniffing algorithm though that it's a different format.
> This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
So you can't assume CSV files produced by one program can always be read by another.
I was amazed when we tried to find something to base a spec on, to help clients to read our CSV files.
My favourite page is the one with programming quotes[2]. I don't know, who that Al Viro is, but he is quite a savage.
[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.plan9/xEb4wY...
This page lists things even I like.
It doesn't even go on to explain why the things are better or worse. Well, it sort've does, if you look for the bad things on the left side. But then he goes into FUD from decades ago that's particularly not relevant to today (in C++ specifically, probably also true for other bad things).
I'm all for ranting about terrible software but at least make sure it's accurate and versioned/dated.
They don't sound like happy people.
It progresses toward constructiveness near the end of the thread though, FWIW, so it's worth reading through if you want sort-of-closure I guess.
My only disagreement is with the one person who said that the other people in the group were strongly-opinionated and that it was "healthy". No. Some of the messages in this thread are deeply insulting personal attacks and simply inappropriate to ever submit anywhere.
That you managed to stay focused is impressive. I fear I would have spent _way_ too long on, shall we say, an "appropriate" reply. Actually I might've just up and left, heh.
I appreciate the TIL regarding a community to call out and avoid. Yes, people like the ones found in this thread are everywhere, but to paraphrase something I said on a similar subject recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17730570, see parent comments for context), I have no inclination to field the signal/noise ratio to engage communities where such people are majority vocal. With such people, it seems you have two options - argue against their views and suffer the continuous backlash; or implicitly agree by not arguing, and risk the potential expectation to behave contrary to your personal standards as a result. Alternatively, one simply avoids them, or calls them out.
HN's moderation does a reasonably good job of eliminating such contention. As time goes by I continue to find new ways to appreciate the carefully-curated status quo here. It's certainly not perfect (particularly the automated post-killing system, which kills a small but noteworthy number of good posts) but at least I never have to drown in distraction and meta basically ever, and I have showdead on so I can read the dead comments (and, most importantly, read with the expectation that they might be inflammatory so there's less surprise), so it's pretty good.
When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.
> I appreciate the TIL regarding a community to call out and avoid.
This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.
> With such people, it seems you have two options - argue against their views and suffer the continuous backlash; or implicitly agree by not arguing, and risk the potential expectation to behave contrary to your personal standards as a result.
Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.
> HN's moderation does a reasonably good job
Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community. cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"
> This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.
Ah. Duly noted, thanks.
> Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.
> When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.
Thanks for this, particularly the first sentence. I'm still learning to mentally model behavior so I can understand the thinking behind a given form of expression, and in turn how I should respond appropriately to it. Now to just learn how to actually quieten down in these settings... :)
> Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community.
For better or worse, I'm really glad I was having slow internet a couple years ago and went "alright what's the URL of that really barebones website again, that'll probably be usably fast" :D
The SnR here is probably the reason I like the place so much; reddit is full of _so much fluff_. Hm, maybe the reason people say they come here for the comments is not so much because the comments will have exactly the thing they want to read but because they're not full of distractions...
> cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"
Okay, this is one of my new favorite quotes, ha!
But hey, I'll still take that over "what's wrong with Electron apps anyway?".
Just do what I do: fork their code and never even consider contributing anything back since you'll probably get shut down anyway.
I've written "Why software sucks" too, but I like to think I actually had a point.
Also, many of these alternatives make no compromise for practicality. GCC sucks, we can all agree, but without it our code would be slow and buggy (TCC doesn’t support ASan or other such debugging tools AFAIK).
> At the moment a detailed rationale is not provided for most of this, so figuring out why some things are considered more or less harmful than others is left as an exercise for the reader. Here is a hint: complexity is the bane of all software, simplicity is the most important quality. See also: Worse is Better by Richard Gabriel.
This is, well, just another way for people to turn their opinions into objective fact. The lumping of C++, D, Python and Ruby all together betrays either a lack of sincerity, or over-opinionation to the point of myopia.
The page links to Zed's rant about how Rails is a ghetto, while he makes some great points about the economics of that ecosystem, I'm left with no salient reasons why I shouldn't choose Rails for a project. Sure, if I want to do what he tried to do in that space, I have no reason to not expect I'll have the same kind of experience he did. The Rails community might be a ghetto, but my project doesn't have to be.
Read between the lines and you see Zed does have respect for Ruby and the Zen of the language. To see it linked on cat-v, to my mind looking for real reasons why people should and shouldn't do things, well, the essay clashes pretty hard with the seeming ideology that "complexity is the bane of all software." Zed was perfectly fine with Rails and all its complexity, he just hated the community and ecosystem. Cat-V is linking to his essay not because they actually agree with him, but because they are enamored with his style.
The whole site reads like a bunch of neckbeards blowing off steam.
C is less harmful alternative to Java? Are you kiddin' me? Have you ever tried creating any non-trivial web service with ANSI C?
For almost every example on the list I could bring examples showing situation where exactly opposite is true.
The old rule of thumb is, any definitive and unsubstantiated statements about superiority of any technology over any other technology should not be trusted.
The sort of person who agrees with this list likely also believes the web should do nothing but serve static HTML.
But, when I see a list like this. Its quite obvious that this is coming from a mindset of the average user should not be using software at all.
Imagine if you will, your grandma always calling you up because she got lost in the textual interface. Yeah that would get old fast.
Also how would one look at cat pictures through a textual interface?
Also, using your logic, C constructs are nothing more than just assembly with more overhead. Why not just use assembly instead? Answering this question will probably answer your question about OOP stuff.
By that logic, we should all use "omniglot", one language in which all the top 100 languages are first-class supported. What could possibly go wrong :D
Embedded systems should be made 'simple' and C++ is the opposite of that.
But I agree with your comment. I found the alternatives equally as harmful, especially as they have a smaller community.