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Posted by ssaboum 9 hours ago

Good software knows when to stop(ogirardot.writizzy.com)
274 points | 152 commentspage 2
sowbug 7 hours ago|
The more stars my personal GitHub repos have, the more likely the project was something I cranked out over a weekend to scratch an itch, and then more or less abandoned because it was good enough -- maybe even perfect for that specific itch?
hollowonepl 5 hours ago||
This is an article Microsoft Windows, Office, Outlook and MS Teams developers and product managers should read, they continually break the working software only to come back regularly to what they have invented already, in the meantime annoying many who had to experience the experiments in between…
ssenssei 7 hours ago||
I built a spotify music extractor called harmoni that helps you download your playlists and I feel I'm done. It does its job and it caters to both non-technicals and technical people alike.
tambourine_man 6 hours ago|
Spotify is a moving target, however. It may change its API, remove it completely, etc. I think you can only be truly done if you don’t rely on a third party.
latexr 6 hours ago||
> I think you can only be truly done if you don’t rely on a third party.

On a third-party that changes. Making software for a specific hardware like a game console or a specific e-reader may still technically rely on a third-party but doesn’t carry the same risk and you can definitely say you’re done.

rglover 7 hours ago||
It's not about software, it's about money. They're chasing what they see making money and being mimetic. Simple as. It's a shame and sad to see so many get caught up in this, but it makes sense relative to where the world is at. People are desperate and this is what desperation manifest looks like.
twitchard 3 hours ago||
Coreutils gets updates regularly! https://gitweb.git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git

Even `ls` gets news flags from time to time.

I think "stopping" is great for software that people want to be stable (like `ls`) but lots of software (web frameworks, SaaS) people start using specifically because they want a stream of updates and they want their software to get better over time.

sidewndr46 5 hours ago||
Don't forget the lifetime support subscription you bought for "ls" 2 years ago. It turns out the lifetime is for the lifetime of the software, not your lifetime.
NoSalt 7 hours ago||
We need something similar to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, to protect un-AI'd Linux distributions so that, in the event of an AI apocalypse, we will have access to clean operating systems.
allemagne 6 hours ago||
https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/

Of course, any AI smart enough to apocalypse us would also know about these.

pkilgore 3 hours ago||
Yeah, but if you vertically integrate you expand your target market, increase switching costs, and can charge rents, so everyone is trying to do it now.
ericmcer 3 hours ago||
Stardew Valley is a great example of this, and that more is not always better.

Specifically he rolled out a "cave" system with procedural dungeon generation where players could mine through walls and other advanced systems, then undid all of it and ended with ~30 static layouts and very simplistic interactions. The entire game feels like a demonstration that simple, predictable and repeatable interactions with software have more longevity than cutting edge dynamic systems.

Gigachad 2 minutes ago|
Stardew is an example of the opposite though? The dev has been loading more and more content via updates for 10 years now. There's so much late game content that would take a very long time to play all of. People are waiting for the devs new game to come out but he is still working on Stardew.
patcon 6 hours ago|
Maybe good software is like a living thing?

It grows and grows and eventually slows or grows too much and dies (cancer), but kinda sheds its top-heavy structure as its regrown anew from the best parts that survived the balanced cancer of growth?

Just forks and forks and restarts. It's not the individual piece of softwares job (or its community's) to manage growing in the larger sense, just to eventually leave and pass on its best parts to the next thing

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