Comment by hhas01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hhas01 | Hacker News Reader

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Well this is it, isn’t it. Because really, what the hell is its USP†? The world already has a perfectly cromulent Rust language. Adding a second, less popular one merely dilutes both efforts; and to what purpose? Ego? Control? Simple unwillingness to accept a direct competitor has already beaten their ass to market and mindshare?

Everyone knows the name Charles Darwin. Now ask them who Alf Wallace is, and why they should they should care. Or Yohan Blake. Or Atty Osborne… and so on.

Where’s the advantage in being an also-ran? It’s a tough but necessary lesson to swallow: accept your lovely technology is just too late to be the successful product you hoped for. Treat the whole exercise as a valuable learning experience, and move on to your next Big Idea as quickly as you can, this time, of course, making sure to get to market before your direct competitors can, so as to leave them in the dust instead of you.

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† Their website doesn’t say. Just a technical features list, and yep, one look: Rust, but a lot less mature with waaay less ecosystem and support. That’s not a winning proposition; that’s a sucker’s deal. Damn but every computer geek needs to do a marketing course.

I had to do some digging, but I found this:

> A memory model and first-class regions which together make it as fast and safe as Rust, without the borrow checker and its aliasing restrictions.

(https://www.reddit.com/r/vale/comments/i95ue8/use_case_of_th...)

“I had to do some digging”

Indeed. I think it’s telling that the opening question on that Reddit thread identified the exact same problem I did, and three months on they still haven’t fixed it. Programmers who fail to provide their users’ needs simply because it doesn’t interest them to do so is a cancer throughout this industry and culture. As a 30-year computer user myself, that is an attitude I expect from children, not from supposed “professionals”.

I don’t care how nice your language is, I care about whether using it is going to make my life better… or worse.

If folks here think I’m bad-tempered and unforgiving, then consider I’ve had to spend the last 20 years teaching myself to program just so I’d no longer be at the complete mercy of those “real programmers” who one too many times made my life shit.

In turn, I’ve done my share of making users lives both better and worse, and while I accept that shit happens I don’t tolerate me messing other people around any better than others messing me.

It’s meant to be called “Computer Science” for a reason. And you should see the size of the knives that real scientists bring to a science fight. I’m being kind.

One last comment:

A good parent fights tooth and claw for their child, and gives it every opportunity they possibly can to enable it to succeed. (And isn’t afraid to show tough love either when that is what is needed.)

Sitting with your thumb up your ass expecting success will come to it automatically just because it’s deserving is the mistake I made. And that was no minor me-too indulgence; it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put end-user automation into the hands of millions. And all that investment and future potential crashed and burned at the very last step to mass adoption, because while I was a good programmer I was a terrible product manager.

Any idiot can write code. That’s the easy part. It’s all the other stuff you need to work hardest at if you’re to build a successful market. ’Cos if you fail to put bums on seats, the best code in the world ain’t worth squat.

> Simple unwillingness to accept a direct competitor has already beaten their ass to market and mindshare?

I have not seen any shred of competition suggestion here. But even if there is competition, that should be encouraged - competition is healthy, and it promotes development. Who is to say that Rust has all the good ideas and nobody else can have any good idea ?

You should encourage competition not stiffle it "because somebody else is more advanced"

You're showing a lot of attachment here. Rust is not your precious child in need of defending by attacking upstarts. There are many tools of this kind and there will be many more to come.

I’m not a Rust user. I have no particular nag in this race. What I do understand, or at least am start to learn, is the difference between a Technology and a Product, and between a Product and Success.

So once again: What is Vale’s USP†? Because it isn’t on their frontpage; which it would be had they thought to ask that question of themselves.

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TL;DR: Goddamn it, all you noobs, but learn How To Sell already. Some of us are just too damned old and tired to want to hold your diapers till you learn to grow up. Try making our lives a bit easier for once; not just to benefit us but your own products as well.

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(† And if you don’t even know what “USP” means, well there you are. As someone who has already tried to bring truly groundbreaking new tech to market and flubbed it, and is just about to roll up sleeves and try, try again, I’m not asking these questions just to be obtuse but to be helpful. However, if you’d rather just insult than ever amount to squat then by all means carry on.)

I don't know what Vale's "USP" is, and I think you're right to point out that it doesn't really sell itself on its front page. But you're being a massive dick about the marketing of a language which is clearly a work-in-progress, and hasn't even hit v0.1. You know you can give advice and be nice about it, right?

Why? Will the market be any nicer to them? They’ve failed to make their case as to why anyone should care that Vale exists; never mind actually differentiate it from the current swathe of robust, established Rust-style languages already in full production use and battling each other for the market’s next 20 years of attention. And they’ve barely reached v0.1, and expect to make a difference when make their grande entrance into that bullpen? Who’s fooling who here?

Look, if they just want to be another D then by all means have at it. It’s great that they have a personal hobby, but at least have the good grace to put up a notice saying they’re making this thing to please nobody but themselves. That way anyone else looking at it knows not to invest their own time into a toy project that doesn’t even take itself seriously, never mind have the chops to make the rest of the world believe in it too.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve said nothing about Vale that I’ve not said of my own projects… right before I’ve pulled the plug on them for failing to hit their overall objectives. And the best of that work’s been technically excellent, with sitting users royally pissed that I’ve just chucked their investments on the scrapheap along with my own. But I’m a realist; and it’s better to pull the trigger now and move on ASAP to the next thing, than drag out a slow but inevitable death and then have to junk an even larger investment further down the line. See also: sunk cost fallacy.

You want to ask other people to believe and invest in you? You’d damn well better bring more than just a tick list of features and your delicate feels. Else you’re just messing them around for your own personal ego.

/fin

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TL;DR: When someone offers you difficult questions and brutal honesy, take it and ask for more, ’cos that’s the best gift they can offer. But if all you want is a pat on the head, then go ask your mom as I’m sure she thinks everything you do is wonderful.

I think you are severely overestimating the negative repercussions of "too many pet projects" existing in the world. If anyone gets left in the cold because they depended on a project that a maintainer gave up on, then that's a valuable lesson that needs to be learned early in one's career.

I argue that, for most small projects, the net educational value of bringing an idea to fruition in public is far greater than any negative externality that such a project imposes. Imagine a world where every side project by a novice engineer is ruthlessly speared to the point of abandonment. I'm sure your counter-argument is that "trial by fire" is the most effective means of growth. You probably believe that forcing people to give up leads them to consider bigger and better things. This is, by far, not the case. Most people give up, and never come back. You are focusing far too much on the immediate value of the project, and completely dismissing its value as a means of creating a motivated, learned individual who can potentially make huge contributions in the future.

Anyway, if your most salient point is "the author should be more explicit about a support plan", then I don't disagree. But man, you could have presented it in a much more accessible and succinct way. If you really care about people taking your advice to heart, you have to be more kind.

Upvoted because I'm pretty sure this comment was written by a neural network. Commented because I'm hoping for a reply.

All comments are written by neural networks,in the end.

Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

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