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> It has been so energetically hyped. Real standards don't have to be promoted I find this interesting because it's the first heuristic I use to judge anything
by rfiat 4y ago
> It has been so energetically hyped. Real standards don't have to be promoted
I find this interesting because it's the first heuristic I use to judge anything new, technical or otherwise (e.g. TV shows or games). Did someone pay to put it in front of me?
It turns out to be a mostly true assumption that you'll hear about good things organically.
- brundolf 4y agoThat's true when it comes to art, but I have almost the opposite feeling when it comes to things that require a network effect to be worth investing in I'll readily judge a new programming language or library based on the quality of its presentation, because if no thought is being given to presentation, I can tell already that it's not going to get much traction. And if a PL doesn't get much traction, its ecosystem and even its long-term development will likely suffer. Although- that's really just a minimum bar, and I agree with the author that Java went way way beyond that, and had more money tied up in that than felt warranted, so I probably would have had the same feelings
- rfiat 4y agoWhat you say about traction is a good point. I think "will it be successful?" is a very different question to "will I like it?". At one end of the scale for me is Rust. I discovered it through organic hype and I like the language but it's not successful enough for me to have found a job writing Rust. At the other end is TikTok. I saw many ads for it before anyone I know ever talked about it. It's massively successful but it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.
- deepsun 4y agoWell, Go hype was such much. But it turned out not that bad actually.