I kind of agree in the sense that stealing a good idea and executing it well is a skill. Copying someones site "pixel by pixel" seems disrispectful though and I don't know what there's to be proud of.
Result: https://shawwn.github.io/pg/
If you think it’s easy, it’s not. The closer you want it to be pixel perfect, the exponentially harder it is to get right.
https://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html
I’m very proud of it. I had to dig through decades-old viaweb templates to figure out which one he used.
If you think it’s easy, or even possible without investing months, I invite you to try.
Today most things are complex, and they don’t last very long. I wanted to pick apart something that’s lasted since the birth of the internet. Viaweb was, after all, the first web application.
According to pg who is an unreliable narrator at the best of times.
I'd say Navisoft[0] might be a better candidate.
You have no idea. Try to redo what I did if you think it’s easy. No looking at my solutions either.
"You slopped it" should be bannable. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the author is wrong, it does nothing to further the conversation, and it’s a criticism that can be leveled at literally any project that isn’t concealing the fact that they’ve used AI when everyone uses AI now except for artisan work.
Go on, I dare you to try to redo what I did. You won’t even know where to start, since I had to buy a book from the 2000s on Viaweb and implement templates based on the contents. Now kindly leave me alone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678355 as well.
As we reduce 20, somehow that legitimacy erodes and at 1 it's "disrespectful". Where along that line was it wrong?
The "problem" we perceive is not stealing, it's stealing from only 1 place.
Likewise, taking elements from many influences and combining them involves a lot of creative choices about which pieces to take from which influence while copying one thing exactly involves no creative choices and is just reusing someone else's effort. It's the difference between baking someone a cake or getting one from the store.