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.
