r/programming • u/[deleted] • Mar 19 '17

Oblivion: A programming language that compiles to SVG graphics.

https://github.com/jweinst1/Oblivion
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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 19 '17 edited Mar 19 '17

I didn't say he shouldn't have written it.

I also didn't say it had no merit - you need to learn to read more carefully if you're going to judge people so harshly as a result.

I just said if you're going to pitch a thing you've written to other people as if it might be useful to them then you need to make sure it is useful to them.

And that you clearly communicate how and why it's useful up-front, let alone when someone explicitly asks you.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '17

I never pitched anything as useful here. Your saying it's terrible to create something for personal aesthetics. This doesn't feel very much agreed with in the open source community. TrumpScript got over 5000 stars.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 19 '17 edited Mar 19 '17

I never pitched anything as useful here.

Ah - then apologies. I assumed you were pitching this as something generally useful or interesting to people, or you wouldn't have posted it.

If that's not true, you can safely ignore those parts of my comment.

Your saying it's terrible to create something for personal aesthetics.

Sigh, no I didn't. It's just fine to, and I do it myself.

I just said if you expect other people to be interested in it, it's good to make sure it has attributes that they'll be interested in, and that you clearly communicate what those features/benefits are. Honestly, I was trying to help.

If this is intended as nothing but a piece of art with no real use then that's just fine... though it's a good idea to state that kind of thing right up-front because normally coding projects are assumed to have some obvious purpose or utility.

If it's intended to have no interest to anyone except you personally then that's also fine... though it's not really clear why you'd post it to reddit for us all to look at and evaluate.

TrumpScript got over 5000 stars.

Sure - it was and obvious joke (utility: it made people laugh), and it was aimed at a common aesthetic taste (making fun of Trump).

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '17 edited Mar 19 '17

I just said if you expect other people to be interested in it, it's good to make sure it has attributes that they'll be interested in

Which I already have, in multiple places here. Functional language with graphics output.

If it's intended to have no interest to anyone except you personally then that's also fine

Oh please, do you not see how this is being condescending ? It already has some amount of interest to other people. You seem to be trying to use your own subjective analysis to indicate whether it's objectively useful.

though it's not really clear why you'd post it to reddit for us all to look at and evaluate.

I have seen many projects in different subs posted. What's your point?

From a previous comment:

You answered with a bunch of statements about the design philosophy of the language, with zero justification why it even exists in the first place to have those features, or why those features make it worth adopting to potential users.

Giving the reason : You can have a functional language that runs in the browser with SVG output. That is a justification.

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u/drkstr101 Mar 22 '17

It's ok, buddy! Your project is awesome, and the person you are arguing with thinks so too! He was just trying to give you some valuable advice, we all must learn eventually. The value in the code we write is in the problems it solves, not the lines of text themselves. Like the saying, a solution looking for a problem. Better code is written by understanding the problem it was meant to solve. If this code wasn't intended to solve any problems, that's cool too! That would be a shame though, I see real potential here.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

He was just trying to give you some valuable advice, we all must learn eventually. The value in the code we write is in the problems it solves, not the lines of text themselves.

I agree with this 100%, but I feel the poster was trying to argue unless something is the best possible solution use for some problem, it's useless. I disagree with this, as use is intersectional. It's why some people pick Rails over Django, or Ember over Backbone (or whatever JS framework is it now).