This is one of the most badly behaved comment sections I've seen on HN.
As at least some seem to exhibit, it is possible to criticise creativity without high-school level bullying.
Sometimes people read things like I've seen written here and get hit harder than anyone expects. If you've been close to the worst aftermath of such things you might think twice about who's reading what you wrote, and its impact.
Personally, what I didn't like about the article was the lack of photos of the final product - it looks really interesting, and I want to see more of it.
I hope the author, who seems based on username to likely also to be the OP, has a thicker skin than those here seeking to bruise it seem to think. They've no right to - and them assuming they do is the worst kind of entitlement.
I believe the moral of the story is to run your opening line by literally any human ("Modern software engineering is rotten. I should know — it's been my livelihood since I graduated from college in late 2019." - literally laugh out loud funny) before submitting it to one of the main discussion boards on modern software engineering - sometimes you reap what you sow
Where's the highschool-level bullying? If the comments called him butthead or pimply-faced then I'd agree, but I skimmed, but they all seem accurate, although brutally honest. Then again I admit I'm biased for the commenters.
The author starts their piece off by calling all of software rotten citing their experience as a professional dev for 3.5 years. This is the first sentence of it.
Yeah, so? That's not what the article is about. It's a highly personal essay about the author's pursuit of beauty.
A bit up its own ass, sure. But it reflects an immense amount of effort and real passion, and I'd prefer 10 articles like this to yet another HN couch monkey holding forth with yet another tired middlebrow dismissal.
After 20+ years as a professional dev I suppose I can safely pronounce on software development and it is pretty rotten compared even to when I started programming in the mid 1990s, which may already have been after the truly beautiful age of programming. I say "listen to the young". They are looking at this craft and they see an industry. Here is some young man trying to recreate an aesthetic experience with the utilitarian tools of his world and the HN posse dogpiles like a pack of zombies. Predictable hot takes and prostration before the machine they worship.
I would say just look around, but it's probably because of some of the information I've seen that opened my eyes to it, so I'll point you to these two talks:
I've seen this sort of reaction on occasion if I go out of my way to write in a manner I find enjoyable and interesting. It seems to evoke a certain kind of innate tribalism in people along the lines of "you do not write like us, so you are unlike us!"
It's quite bothersome, and it often comes from people who supposedly pride themselves on being open-minded. As soon as you start writing in this way people will accuse you of 'trying to seem smarter than you are' and it seems to trigger some kind of persecution complex. It's like dude, maybe I just enjoy larping as a Victorian? Keep off my neck!
It's pretty much what I've come to expect out of HN, unfortunately. There's a very good chance that most of the people commenting read the first two paragraphs, had a kneejerk reaction and then—if we're lucky, and with HN commenters, we rarely are—maybe skimmed the rest of it.
Edit: Actually, having read the comments, I think a bunch of them just looked at the picture.
As at least some seem to exhibit, it is possible to criticise creativity without high-school level bullying.
Sometimes people read things like I've seen written here and get hit harder than anyone expects. If you've been close to the worst aftermath of such things you might think twice about who's reading what you wrote, and its impact.
Personally, what I didn't like about the article was the lack of photos of the final product - it looks really interesting, and I want to see more of it.
I hope the author, who seems based on username to likely also to be the OP, has a thicker skin than those here seeking to bruise it seem to think. They've no right to - and them assuming they do is the worst kind of entitlement.