7 ms·

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

• libria 3mo ago
  Ask yourself why you feel that way, though. If I pixel-by-pixel copy discrete ideas from 20 different sites to build my own, that seems different, legit. Zero new code by me, I just stitched it together. 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.
  • kej 3mo ago
    The sorites paradox says that removing a grain of sand from a heap doesn't stop it from being a heap, and yet we can do that until we are left with a single grain of sand which is clearly not a heap. 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.
  • iammjm 3mo ago
    Clearly the act of combining various elements into a coherent whole is the added value here. Like musicians which take various samples and sounds and combine them into something novel and harmonic
• sillysaurusx 3mo ago
  I spent about a year copying pg’s site: https://github.com/shawwn/pg https://github.com/shawwn/pg Result: https://shawwn.github.io/pg/ 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 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.
  • nusl 3mo ago
    In the age on LLMs it's definitely way easier than what you did.
    • sillysaurusx 3mo ago
      No, it’s not. I used LLMs. It was still hard as fuck, and LLMs can’t actually help you when you’re trying to reproduce someone’s graphical design (specifically the pg buttons). If you think it’s easy, or even possible without investing months, I invite you to try.
      • nusl 3mo ago
        Okay, I stand corrected. Apologies for making the assumptions I did.
  • jmercouris 3mo ago
    Why did you do this?
    • sillysaurusx 3mo ago
      It was fun, and I like a challenge. I enjoy Lisp, and I retracing pg’s steps was gratifying. 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.
      • zimpenfish 3mo ago
        > 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaviSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaviSoft
  • parliament32 3mo ago
    [flagged]
• carlosjobim 3mo ago
  I thought the same at first, but they are copying somebody's old and retired design, ie the other company doesn't use that design anymore.