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Comment by superuser2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure this is true. You can be happy with work that anyone skilled in the art thinks is terrible, i.e. maybe you're really proud of your $REGISTER_GLOBALS dependent, SQLi-vulnerable, spaghetti PHP app. Maybe you're really happy with your scientific paper that the peer review community has ripped to shreds as false. Or you really, really like the novel you wrote, despite well-articulated and uniformly scathing takedowns from editors, English professors, literary critics, etc.

Or, conversely, you're a perfectionist and kicking yourself over the single calculation mistake in an otherwise field-defining paper, masterful performance, etc.

When you participate in a craft, there are measures and standards of quality orthogonal to your emotions, and they matter a great deal in determining whether a work is successful.

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What I think OP was saying was that the success of /an individual/, not the work he puts out, is not objective. There are certainly objective standards of quality for the work an individual creates. I think OP's point was that even a person who's put out nothing but unsuccessful work is a successful person if he is happy with it.

And on the other hand, there's Wordpress.

Humorous, but relevant. PHP and Wordpress are derided by many, perhaps rightfully so. Despite many well founded claims against them they remain ubiquitous.

Which metric do we use to define success here? Can shitty software be considered successful just because everyone uses it?

People have built businesses thanks to that shitty software, important news have been broken by tech unsavvy bloggers that created a website very easily thanks to the platform, hordes of youngsters approached programming writing a shitty Wordpress plugin... You would still call that a failure just because it doesn't use elegant software according to the standards of a community of professional that never come to terms with its hindering perfectionism?

People don't buy a drill, they buy a hole in the wall.

People don't buy the best most perfect fancy publishing platform, they buy something that lets them publish their content and move on with their lives.

I think the success is pretty self-evident?

Where can you buy holes for your wall?! "People don't want a drill they want a hole in the wall."

Sorry for pedantry, but think it helps with the metaphor.

You're right - that was pedantry.

It definitely helps, thanks.

"Or you really, really like the novel you wrote, despite well-articulated and uniformly scathing takedowns from editors, English professors, literary critics, etc."

This description != a worthless piece of art.

E.L. James is probably the most obvious recent example of someone who is almost universally decried by the above professions, but still writes something that at the very least is enjoyed by a lot of people. However, there are dozens of - often very successful and much-beloved - writers who fit the same description.

Defining quality in art is a very, very difficult proposition.

On a side note, there are plenty of dreadfully-written, insecure, $register_globals - dependent PHP apps out there solving real problems for real people.

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