As others have mentioned, a pie is consumable, and thus a good one has value even if it isn't original.
But a slight change to the original scenario makes asking about originality much more reasonable:
Imagine you write a peach pie recipe over the weekend, and you give a copy of the recipe to your friend. They respond:
"Wait, how is this different from every other peach pie recipe that's ever been written? It seems really similar to another recipe I have."
That's not an unreasonable answer.
When I was in a band, one of the most valuable things my songwriting friends and I did for each other was tell each other when our work sounded like something that was already out there.
If you make a new piece of software and offer it to a friend to use, it's not unreasonable for them to ask how it's different from something that's out there already.
I think the better metaphor is: Imagine you make a chair over the weekend. You already have many chairs. Chairs are readily and cheaply available. Your design is likely derivative of many other chairs.
Being told any of these things by a friend you show the chair to is entirely pointless and maybe even mean. The only angle that has some level of social acceptability is an angle like "check out this chair that's like what you wanted to build, maybe you could learn something from it", but even that is a 50/50 on whether its taken positively or taken as "oh, you don't think I don't know how to build a chair, wtf bro".
Pie recipes are different. Music is different (VERY different) (incomparable).
And yet we're paid to write derivative songs all day which is why I don't think the analogy fits.
If I write yet another rails app that does nothing to push the industry forward and isn't novel (to a computer scientist) it nonetheless provides business value. And since it isn't consumed on use it's clear that we're talking about a bespoke durable good — a chair, a shelf, a thing that is useful without it being novel.
Software might be made of words but that doesn't make it a recipe or a song.
But in this case, the bespoke rails app does do something that other ones do not, in the sense of it works with a specific database with specific operations.
To stretch the analogy, "this chair fits people who are 180.3cm tall better than any previous chair"
You're comparing completely different products by abstract concepts that are entirely contextual. So the GP is going to be just as "correct" as you. That's the problem with analogies, the more abstract they are, the more people disagree because they perceive them from a different contextual view point.
Brilliant inversion. Because software can be used without consuming it we presume there is some utility in new software distinct from prior software otherwise it would come with information explaining it was purely a "creative act" as the article puts it.
I wouldn't create a new office suite for the joy of creation then offer it along side ms word or google docs. I might make one then put it in a portfolio as a showcase of skill or do it to learn some skill. But having two word processors is useless in a way that having 2 of a consumable good is not.
> When I was in a band, one of the most valuable things my songwriting friends and I did for each other was tell each other when our work sounded like something that was already out there.
I'm a big advocate for originality, but its worth noting that most bands will have covered at least one song.
> If you make a new piece of software and offer it to a friend to use, it's not unreasonable for them to ask how it's different from something that's out there already.
If you're comparing baking to software then I'd argue that the software equivalent of a recipe is going to be frameworks and the programming language. And people do very much flock towards common frameworks that are known to work well. Just like how a lot of people prefer to use recipes that are known to work rather than chancing on something unknown.
Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Even so, bands that do original music often try to do the cover in their own style, so the question of "how is this different from the original" is still relevant.
> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original.
Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers
> Even so, bands that do original music often try to do the cover in their own style
"often" is a pretty telling term here because it's also often when the cover is extremely faithful to the original.
> so the question of "how is this different from the original" is still relevant.
People ask that question about all sorts of things. But what the point originally being inferred was, is that if the secondary item isn't distinct enough from the original then the secondary item doesn't have much value. And I'm making a point that doesn't apply to music (and nor do I believe it applies to baking either).
The entire premise of some pastimes, such as karaoke, is centred around the concept of replication rather than originality.
Personally, I prefer originality over replication too. but it would be stupid for me to ignore the fact that a significant number of the worlds population just want to enjoy something without caring about how original it is.
> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original.
Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers
Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well understood within the music community that a song even has separate copyrights for the song itself and a recording of its performance (even by the songwriter).
A baked pie is analogous to a performance of a recipe, while the recipe itself is analogous to the song (as a concept).
But it is strange to think of a reimplementation of a piece of software that one might acquire and use easily; it doesn't really fit the concept of performance. I am in fact a fan of reimplementing things in order to figure out how they work, but I don't expect my implementation to have any utility beyond the pedagogical value I got from doing it, unless it is in some way different from what exists already. I'm not sure what value I'd get from showing it to someone or what they'd get from looking at it, exactly.
> Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well understood within the music community that a song even has separate copyrights for the song itself and a recording of its performance (even by the songwriter).
If only it were that simple. There are constantly cases bought to court about similarities in one persons work to another artists. Then you have other issues around what constitutes a derivative work. And so many original songs sample other artists songs and pay them royalties, that's not a cover either.
I think what you're trying to highlight is writing credits vs performance. Which is a lot easier to define. However even here, plenty of disputes still happen.
> But it is strange to think of a reimplementation of a piece of software that one might acquire and use easily; it doesn't really fit the concept of performance.
The real problem with these analogies is that you're comparing something consumable with something reuable. But I accept the point of an analogy isn't precision.
> I am in fact a fan of reimplementing things in order to figure out how they work, but I don't expect my implementation to have any utility beyond the pedagogical value I got from doing it, unless it is in some way different from what exists already.
Would emulation fall into this category? You're building software to run something exactly as it would run elsewhere - a reimplementation. The motive differs (to run on different hardware) but that's not a property of the product itself.
Which comes back to my earlier post: you're talking about the merit of replication without discussing motives behind it. In your latest comment you say "to figure out how they work" and that's another great example of a motive that brings value to replication.
> If only it were that simple. There are constantly cases bought to court about similarities in one persons work to another artists. Then you have other issues around what constitutes a derivative work. And so many original songs sample other artists songs and pay them royalties, that's not a cover either.
It's increasingly difficult to accept that you are replying to jp57 in good faith. They are not talking about the ability of anyone to recognize the difference between an original and a derived work. The concept of a cover is well-understood.
My point is that the whole concept of originality is a blurry mess and hugely subjective.
To demonstrate that point, I was giving other examples of copying in music. Let’s remember that it was me who introduced the analogy of a cover when the OP examples how bands might pride themselves on originality. I’m giving examples that his statement is false as often as it is true.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the OPs point of view. Or maybe I’m just too old for this debate because trends are usually cyclical. If either of those are true then I’m sorry and I’ll bow out.
Well, I'm in my 50s, I thought it was the kids who expected their friends to be uncritically accepting.
This whole subthread spawned from one sentence where I asserted that I found it valuable when my friends would tell me if they thought my songs sounded too much like something else (and that they expected the same from me), as an illustration that there are contexts in which asking about originality is something that would be reasonable for a friend to do. Nothing you've said so far seems intended to refute any of that.
I stand by the notion that the definition of "cover" and "original" song are not especially ambiguous, even though music appreciation is subjective and there are edge cases where reasonable people may disagree about whether two songs are "too similar" to be considered distinct songs.
I wasn’t claiming people get confused about covers. But to be honest, I think we’ve both been missing each others point.
For the sake of keeping things on topic, and also because I’m about to crack open a bottle of whisky, I’ll just leave the following comment:
Your point about constructive feedback is an empowering one. And while I’m not sure I’ve understood the nuances of everything you’ve posted, I do 100% agree with your sentiment regarding constructive feedback.
> I think we’ve both been missing each others point.
This is so fucking gross. Nobody has been "missing" you. If you are truly sorry and willing to change, then the appropriate response is to own up to and apologize for intentionally misreading the person who you have wronged, not try to pass off blame to them.
When a User adopts a new piece of software an investment of time and effort is necessary (not so for eating a pie). If a particular piece of software doesn't do anything to improve the User's current process it is a wasted investment. If the User currently doesn't use a similar piece of software because they found what is available lacking then why invest if the new software doesn't do anything different.
Asking how a product is different is always relevant when allocation of your own resources is involved.
Zero investment of my time or resources - I already know how to eat pi - nothing to learn or experiment. If it is the same pie I had before and did not like I don't even bother to try it. Of course if it is different than pie I had before I might try it but apparently I should not even ask.
I have thought about this in the context of making music as well. For me the line of thinking goes somewhat like this:
1. I value music that is a honest expression of a feeling, some sort of musical idea or whatever
2. Personally I would not usually feel satisfied with my own musical expression if I copied a thing that works for someone else
This means that I also find it unlikely that a popstars scripted appearance just happened to authentically produce expressions that just coincidentally happened to reproduce sucessful music (especially given the fact that they don't write the songs themselves usually). Additionally I apply the standards I apply to myself to others. This is something e.g. programmers are probably deeply familiar with.
Now this is a bit like in the Matrix films where Cypher betrays our heros, because he would rather enjoy his steak in the simulation than face the desert of the real. Only I believe the choice isn't really there. Either you can ignore the simulation or you're allergic to it. I could pretend I like whatever music people listen to usually, but it both bores me and makes me actively hate myself for listening to it.
Now music that is good is something else. And it doesn't even need to be a new idea or particularily complex to play. There just needs to be something within the musical expression that itself goes elsewhere.
Also the analogy just really breaks at the seam we’re examining because a reasonable and obvious answer would be “I like the pies you get from this one”, which isn’t a great answer if you’re talking about software. And recipes are a lot simpler than software, so your friend could just look at the two recipes and quickly see how they’re different.
Indeed if that's the response, you either have an acquaintance with 0 emotional intelligence that is by default like an elephant in porcelain shop in relationships, probably move on since its a lifelong effort to even just sustain such friendship.
Or its an envious a-hole since such message is clearly denigrating, still lacks basic emotional intelligence, and then just run and don't look back. If I ever saw 2 women commenting each other's efforts like that, there would be a fight soon or at least lifelong hate would have firmly started.
Normal response is for example a mix of appreciation of effort, curiosity about uniqueness and methodology, other recipes, etc. One can chip in other attempts and compare, that's how mankind lived till now and its considered normal human interaction (TM).
Bad relationships are much worse than no relationships, be it friends or romantic type. Many folks are very afraid of loneliness, but there is strength in it with right mindset for everybody (us introverts thrive in loneliness just sparingly sprinkled with quality human interactions, but others consider it daunting to the point of preferring serious harm)
It seems like the main difference of opinion in this thread comes down to one's default assumptions about whether you expect your friends to give you honest feedback or just smile to save your feelings. Maybe this is a generational or cultural difference, but I think if you can't get honest feedback from your friends you'll never get it at all.
If I took the time to develop, write down and share a recipe, I'd welcome that question. Even if it's not original, there is variation among peach pies and I clearly have an opinion on it.
More precisely, you mean more generally, not more precisely. Saying pie is a consumable and a rival good are equally accurate, but the former is more precise, as the former is a subset of the latter.
No, I meant what I wrote. Another comment mentioned a chair [1]. A comfortable chair is not consumable, but it is rival. Rivalry is what makes pies and code economically distinct, not consumability.
Put another way, if you have access to infinite identical pies, they behave like code. They're still consumable. But not rival.
When I see two things that appear the same, but were developed or created by two different people and/or methods, I inspect each closely to see where the differences lie. Usually, there are some good lessons to learn from each new pie I consume!
Aside from duplication there's also competition. If you bake for your family, your pie will be appreciated, regardless of its novelty. But if your pie is meant to go onto a supermarket shelf alongside other pies, you need to give the consumer an incentive to choose yours - by making it better and/or different.
Yeah, the main difference is software is accessible online so it's competing on a worldwide stage. This make people feel there's an abundance of software and they get picky.
This is totally fine from economic perspective. But when it comes to side projects that aren't selling to consumers, there's no reason to bring down someone if you see no value in their work. Especially when they're sharing it for free with no expectations, like most software side projects we see here hosted on GitHub.
Look at many show HN, someone sharing their little fun project, then you've some entitled users asking
What does this offer over this product of fortune 500 company? Why should I use it?
Often the side project still have some advantage but do these people realize how ridiculous and entitled they sound? The author shared a fun project for free, they're not asking for a billion $ investment.
What do you think motivates people to submit a Show HN? Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.
I don't know about you but I'm speaking from experience, not hypothetically. I shared multiple open source side projects where I made something for myself then shared it with the world.
> Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.
Can you expand? the vast majority of open source projects don't make a dime. I don't see the ulterior motive you're talking about. Unless you mean like they get more GitHub stars?
What motivated you to share them? What outcome did you expect?
I’m not talking about revenue. I’m talking about the fact that sharing their creation usually comes with expectations of some (at least psychological) benefit for the sharer. For example, some people want to receive praise for the project. Or they may want to attract collaborators. Still others actually do seek criticism in order to potentially improve the work.
Therefore, “sharing without expectations” doesn’t seem a likely occurrence in that context. People do have expectations, if only unconsciously, and others react with the understanding of such expectations being present.
But there was nothing demanded that the users needed to do. Just "Hey I made this cool thing and it does XYZ." That was my point. If the word 'expectations' entails things like one feeling good about making a small difference in the world then I meant something else and that was a poor choice of words on my part.
Going to skip the analogy, because everyone has tortured it sufficiently already.
This is a good point. The comment section implicitly argues for novelty because it seeks a dopamine hit for something new -- after all, that's what people are looking for when they browse an aggregator! However, novel isn't everything even if you get more Internet points for it.
Is it original to execute something really well? Some would say yes, and some would say no. Lots of software that has had an outsized impact started out as very similar to other things, with "just" some improvements here and there. And I guarantee you there were over-eager commenters telling people to not be excited because it isn't new enough to them.
This isn't arguing for toxic positivity, either. Just a recognition that the bored/cynical users need for novelty is not something that everything listed on the Internet has to fill.
A pie is a physical object which enjoys a barrier to competition by being geographically near the consumer - other pies are not near your mouth.
A pie degrades quickly over time - last month's pie is not a competitor to today's pie.
A pie is destroyed during consumption - the pie your friend ate cannot be then eaten by you, no matter how delicious they say it was.
Software (and especially web/mobile/SaaS) is nothing like pies - your friend eats a delicious piece of software, telecommunicates this to you halfway around the world and you can put down the pie you were eating and instantly eat the same pie as your friend, then tell more friends. Pretty soon, nobody's eating the previous pies.
I mean, recreational programming and creating a side project for fun is nice and all, but a peach pie is something you can consume and is thus of interest to anyone who likes peach pies, whereas software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. Kudos to you for writing a generic TODO app, but why should anyone else be excited about it? I'm not sure why we even need to compare baking pies to writing software, it's apples to oranges.
I believe the common problem is when creators who submit their work on HN don’t open with what differentiates their version, thus exhibiting a lack of awareness about existing solutions. And there is a cost in attention for HN readers to figure out if there’s anything new and interesting about the work. There is an expectation that HN submissions should be worth the reader’s while.
> software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it.
There can be many reasons. The practical availability or licensing of the work is the most common one. It is great that google has an amazing implementation of whatever state of the art algorithm. It is not much use to anybody else if they can't read the code, or can't build on it.
The other practical reason is that people building the thing are building their mastery. You are not going to wake up one day and make a state of the art contribution on your first try. You need to build up your skills to it through a series of steps. This would matter even if all software ever written would be equally available and unencumbered for everyone. But if you want people to push the boundaries of what possible they have to get there first.
Do you want someone to be able to bake a beautifully decorated 3 tier wedding cake? That journey starts with them baking a simple sponge cake. Then learning how to put icing on that. Then learning how to make a good cream filling. Then putting simple decoration on. And so on and so on. If you don't let them progress through all these steps and you demand that they bake 3 layer beautifully decorated cakes on their first day then increasingly less and less people will be able to push the state of the art.
I would argue that being the first open source variant of a common commercial product is an interesting differentiator. But if there's already an open source version just being another open source one isn't interesting. This is exactly the kind of difference that we're talking about that make something not "just another".
And if someone's doing a thing to learn then why is it being shared, how does that change how it's interesting to other people? I often argue such things should be put in portfolios to show off skills, but that doesn't really make it interesting beyond the scope of evaluating someone's skill. This kind of academic or portfolio work is also clearly not what we're discussing because of course it has inherent value in just the creation.
If you make it to do app and share it with me, I really don't care. Unless you're trying to show me that you can use language XYZ with tool set ABC and your to-do app does that. But even then I don't care about the to do with I care about your skills.
> I often argue such things should be put in portfolios to show off skills,
Sure.
> This kind of academic or portfolio work is also clearly not what we're discussing because of course it has inherent value in just the creation.
You are no boss of mine, i discuss what i want. :p What you are saying here is exactly the point I am making. You only see the value of the software which is provided by its direct use. So much so that you don’t even want to discuss the alternative values and cide me for even bringing them up.
Imagine that you take steel bars and forge a garden fork out of it using blacksmithing techniques. There is value in that, in as much as the person who made it become a better craft person by doing so. Even if you can get a better fork at home depot for much cheaper.
> If you make it to do app and share it with me, I really don't care.
That is up to you. If you make a todo app and share it with me i will ask you what made you interested in making a todo app. But yeah a todo app is not a particularly inspiring thing in the grand scheme of things, so unless you are a very junior developer or you are trying some new technique you are unlikely to get much accolades for it.
But todo apps is not the only thing one can do. If you implement some cool artistic image filter, or write a process scheduler, or make an auto-router for pcb traces i will celebrate that with you even if there are better solutions out there. Because those are your “garden forks” and the skills you learned while making them can’t be taken away from you.
> Imagine that you take steel bars and forge a ...
Like the pie these are consumable and have value unlike another to do app which can be trivially copied like all software. That and learned a much more rare skill is much cooler.
> If you make a todo app and share it with me i will ask you what made you intereste...
And we are back to discussing skills. If someone makes a thing to learn a skill discussing that skill is lot more fun and useful than the app itself.
I am not just blindly dumping on people's accomplishments, but I also think that people who show me stuff don't want to be patronized, most people I associate with find that insulting.
Some people care, you know, about their friend's mastery and progression of some craft. Just because it may not be interesting to a random stranger (or it may be, if the story about the process is interesting and well written) does not mean it's not interesting to anyone.
Re: the open source, you know how often open source projects die because the maintainers get bored or busy or there's disagreement about the direction of the project? A fuckload. Having multiple open source projects that do the same thing - and let's be clear, nothing complex is ever exactly the same - is healthy. It means if they diverge in the future that you may prefer project A and detest the changes made in project B. If project B was the only one to exist, you'd be angry.
I mean if you wrote it purely in assembler, or pacman inside of Excel, or in a fun and interesting way. Purely functional, provably correct. There are lots of reasons to share it with others.
Except it is not a pie but a shovel. So the question how does it differs from ShovelMaster 3000 that is used on all other construction sites is not unreasonable.
And there can be a lot of good answers - it is lighter, it looks cooler, the grip is more ergonomic, it is made of chinesium and cheap and if you are only building a shed - it will get the job done without using the unholy trinity of docker, ansible and terraform, and it will be in your hands in 5 min and not require overnight delivery by amazon.
And you can see this here on hnews - when someone shows us something that is entertaining, no asks how it differs from Heroes 3 or Quake. But we do for the next cloud synced postman clone that is on it's way to becoming as worse as Postman when they get the VC money.
Why pay you, a person with this as their resume, when I can pay someone with 10 other 'hits' on their resume and their software also does this?
Why pay the newb is a great question to ask.
The answer to 'How is it different' is a whiteboard interview problem. If the developer cannot immediately extol the virtues of their product, do you want to give them money? Are they confident in their skills? Were they just copying other's recipes?
You'll know the answer to that and many other questions the minute the developer has to think and answer this fundamental question.
You'll also know if they're full of shit almost immediately.
It doesn't matter what the developer's prior relationship to you was. When they hand you software, and expect others to pay for it they need to be asked this question. Their answer will assist them in understanding their product and how to sell it to others.
Playing a classical piece music. You’ll never be anywhere near the top musicians, but people still do it because it’s enjoyable. They also share it with others.
Painting: you’re not a professional, but creating and sharing your works is still a joy.
Normally to determine if someone is not cruel and worth being near in general I invite them to a nice restaurant. Then I let them handle most of the interactions with the wait staff. If they are rude or jerks to people they have authority over I stop interacting with them. Thank you for saving me the price of a meal with having to vet you.
Nothing from the outset appears that original, in a world of nearly infinite information, when you start. So just do the thing, it will become original in your execution of the thing.
At the time I write this reply, the word "pie" shows up 98 times on this thread.
The word CRISP? Will show up once, when I hit "add comment".
This has brought out the worst of Hacker News in a very obvious way. I suppose it was damn near guaranteed to, but you didn't have to literally every one of you bring a CRISPer to a pie fight.
"As a peer reviewer for the CRISP organization (ok, three times) the author is very obviously wrong about pie. It is a moral duty that pie be original work, properly cited, and advance the state of the art. I stopped reading after the second paragraph."
Hmm... While I try to refrain from picking sides in a beatdown on an analogy, that's an interesting suggestion that seems worth examining.
There's a lot of software I use that isn't for getting work done. Even the software that's meant for getting work done doesn't have to be used that way.
Pie cannot be duplicated. Even if you're offering me a worse pie than I ate yesterday, either I enjoy yours or I have no pie.
Software, on the other side, is duplicated on a whim. If you are not offering me new solutions that I need, I'm not even going to bother looking at it.
Not only is it duplicated on a whim, the internet makes discovering it, and getting it, very easy.
So I can not only easily keep getting that one great pie infinitely, I can discover and sample every great pie in the world to find the very best one for me. With actual pie, I'd probably had to travel to Vienna (sachtertore!), or Seattle (apple pie?) to be able to "sample" it.
It’s not that pie can’t be duplicated, it’s that there are real costs to the duplication. And making pies precisely the same is surprisingly hard (pie is my favorite treat and I make them all the time).
Not so with software. Duplication and distribution are essentially free. Copies are perfect replicas. Why not then insist on the best version? Also, with food, the varied experience of slightly different pies is fun (“variety is the spice of life”). Unless I expected variation in my software, I would be extremely annoyed that it did not do what I wanted.
Maybe I'm wrong—probably am—but isn't the article talking about something else? He's not talking about making a copy of a piece of software as a perfect replica. I think he's talking about coding something that is not conceptually different from something that was already existing.
> I’m genuinely confused by your comment. Pies can be duplicated. You just grab the same ingredients and follow the same recipe.
That’s just a different pie made with the same ingredients and recipe, it’s not the same pie I ate yesterday, it’s not a duplicate. I can never have that pie I ate yesterday again.
I can, however, make as many perfect duplicates of software as I want.
> I can, however, make as many perfect duplicates of software as I want.
Absolutely true but the point of the article is not about duplicating software. Is about developing something someone else already developed in a similar way even though the act of doing that doesn't produce something that's "original".
I'm not, I get what they're saying. If I want to eat pie, I need to bake one first or find someone to bake it every time. If I want to use a software, I only need to write or find the software once; then I can keep using it indefinitely. Therefore, the common assumption is perfectly justified. Most people who write software do so to create something that isn't already available.
That said, I still agree with the post. Justified or not, the assumption is frequently wrong. Coding is fun for its own sake.
> Most people who write software do so to create something that isn't already available.
Well I guess we must work in a different environment because over my 13 years as a web dev I've seen people trying to reinvent the weel and coding the same thing over and over again. Just think at all infinite JS frameworks.
Are they technically identical? No. Was the problem "solved" already? Probably yes. Was it not solved the exact way the developer wanted? Also probably yes which is why they decided to code something new.
They don't consider it technically identical. The design goal was to make something that's significantly better in some way or another. Which is very unlike pie baking.
(I'm sure there's a few frameworks made just for fun/practice but by the time you see it published I'd round that down below 10%)
I agree with the idea that many projects are just fun and stand on that basis, but the analogy doesn't work IMHO.
When you bake a pie, it gets eaten, so who cares if it's just like another pie, in fact it's probably great if it is. And the more people baking peach pies, the better!
The analogy should be with pie recipes. In that case, your pie recipe really should bring something different to existing ones. It doesn't need to be 'better' necessarily, but if it's essentially identical, there's no real point to the recipe, except for you to practice writing out recipes.
I guess that final “except” is the entire point? You do something even if it’s not original or different because it’s fun and good practice for you.
Because maybe it is the same recipe with the same ingredients but the end result can still be different. Maybe yours is handwritten and I like your calligraphy, maybe you’re more meticulous and you documented all the steps more in details.
It can still be the same recipe. It can still provide the same service and yet there might still be useful differences.
There's of course nothing wrong with re-implementing 'ls' in C with all the same patterns, and sure, that could be fun, and maybe even earn a slither of respect, but no-one is going to care about your project as something useful or interesting, quite rightly.
The article isn't just saying it's "absolutely fine" to make software for fun/practice, it's complaining about other people having utility-focused questions and evaluations. Assuming that "show it to your friend" is supposed to be an analogy for more general showing off, reactions like that are plenty reasonable. If it's software nobody is intended to use then that should be made clear up front.
> The friend has assumed that your goal is to "efficiently" reach the goal of a delicious pie, or perhaps even to create a new kind of pie. But that's not the goal at all!
> Baking a pie is a creative act. It's personal, it's inherently delightful, it's an act of caring for others. It's also a craft that one can improve at over time. Just buying the "best" pie would defeat the point.
Not sure author realises the irony here. Creating "the pie" is not art. It is not even craft. It is baking ingredients, and people did that bazilions times before.
My brother sat with my mother one day, meticulously recording every detail he could while she made a pie crust, filled it, and baked it. All the quantities, how they were combined, temperatures, durations, etc.
GP is pointlessly provocative, although an argument might be made that industrial pie production is neither art nor craft.
Your mom's case is different and much more interesting. She must make truly transcendent pies.
My half-dozen forays into making "from scratch" pie crust and filling have been surprisingly successful, but I might be missing something. I followed recipes from either Mark Bittman or America's Test Kitchen.
But a slight change to the original scenario makes asking about originality much more reasonable:
Imagine you write a peach pie recipe over the weekend, and you give a copy of the recipe to your friend. They respond:
"Wait, how is this different from every other peach pie recipe that's ever been written? It seems really similar to another recipe I have."
That's not an unreasonable answer.
When I was in a band, one of the most valuable things my songwriting friends and I did for each other was tell each other when our work sounded like something that was already out there.
If you make a new piece of software and offer it to a friend to use, it's not unreasonable for them to ask how it's different from something that's out there already.