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Comment by Karellen | Hacker News Reader

How is it that on HN, people are complaining about being given a link to the git repo for the project source?!?

Not only that, but Oh no!!, there's no `README.md` or `INSTALL.md` yet in this 4-day old, 2-commit repository to tell users how to build it? How will they ever figure it out, and find the 25-line `Makefile` out of the... 6 files in the repo?

Seriously?

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I guess the anecdotes about interviewees not being able to figure out a (very) simple Git repo without hand holding (or write 'fizzbuzz') are true.

I sincerely wish those were fictions. I’ve been on the interviewing end of both of those cases. It’s OK (if a bit surprising) if someone’s never used Git before. Maybe they worked at a Perforce or Subversion shop. It’s not OK to be unable to Google “git basics” to figure out how to clone a repo.

It might be a bit over the top in the heat of a 30 minute interview, but for say an at-home two hour challenge it's not too unreasonable.

One manager I know says he gets "senior" candidates who can't do FizzBuzz. Not just have trouble with the modulo operator, but can't even get started.

Lying?

Just not able to interview well?

That's one excellently human-readable makefile, too.

That's the use case where Makefile shines.

Though it's not a particularly good one, the dependencies are lacking. Eg, .html doesn't depend on .texi, and so this one won't work right.

IMO, Makefile is at its best on small projects with trivial rules and no configuration. Once you go to a generator it's a waste, because it's not human friendly anymore. And complex projects want something more like cmake anyway.

People are NOT complaining about that (git, source, 4day old code, readable makefile that is better than a readme, etc)

People here are programmed to react a certain way to the very mention of Stallman. I will not elaborate further.

Not only are people here are programmed to react a certain way to the very mention of Stallman, but also Emacs.

http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...

RMS sure do know how to bring it out in people don’t he?

What kind of person goes to the trouble of creating an entire reference manual and doesn't take the very last step of generating the readable files?

It's like inviting somebody over for a meal, only to dump a set of kitchen utensils, ingredients, and recipe in their lap.

If it's only 2-commits-old, why "release" it to the public? Why not say "alpha source code for a language reference is available?"

Hackers can still try to build it using random comments on the internet instead of a README.

"Release Early, Release Often"

-- Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1997

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...

Thanks, but I know who Linus is already. You don't need to paste the wiki article AND the references, the references are available at the bottom of the page!

Also people who don't know about their package manager's whatprovides command.

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