Hacker News Reader

This sounds like an engineer chiding artists for not being productive.

There's nothing wrong with deriving pleasure from deep analysis of a programming language - similarly with all of art or mathematics.

Feel free to fall in love with your technology, just realize it's not as likely to make you rich if your goal isn't to ship product.

View on HN

This author enjoys turning a nice line of code or structuring a nice program as much as anyone. Read his past posts. I don't see anything here remotely against art or enjoying the challenge of your work. The point is for him it's important not to get lost in the tools at the expense of not making things.

Agreed, completely, however there is one difference: When an artist ceases to ship, they starve.

Art, like science, is not necessarily a profession. It can be an avocation. There are many important artists and scientists that did not support themselves with their art or science.

"l'Unix pour l'Unix" (Unix for Unix's sake)?!

I know some folks who are like that. I think most of the Unix/Linux advocates I personally know started this way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com