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Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by andai on Sunday October 11, 2026 @10:13AM (#50043523)
>I hadn't actually explained what the software would do.

Half the posts I see lately are like, "Gleam 2.0. What we learned" and then you go to the homepage and it's "Gleam is a Tribble for your Fork! (Scroll down) See if you qualify for Gleam Enterprise!"

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by beardbandit on Sunday October 11, 2026 @10:21AM (#50043606)
I hate marketing websites especially for developer products.

“You no longer have to florp, now you can vorp!”

Big numbers, random charts. 10x 100x 200x!

Who is this for? Just make the docs the home page.

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by epistasis on Sunday October 11, 2026 @01:35PM (#50045671)
The best explanation I have heard is that these pages exist for the finance team that has to go try to understand what the product is that they are being asked to authorize a purchase for.

So what comes across as extremely vague, unclear, and perhaps obfuscatory, is actually somewhat properly targeted to someone who needs to decide "is this an appropriate class of purchase for a dev team." They don't need to decide if it's the best technology for the purpose, just that it is a technology for that purpose.

This is especially clear on every single one of the AWS technology top hits. Clearly the product is so vaguely described that an actual user gleams zero usable information on whether it will solve the task they have at hand, or what the capabilities are.

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by trollbridge on Sunday October 11, 2026 @01:41PM (#50045742)
Pricing:

Individual - free Pro - $20/mo Business - $50/mo (mysteriously the same as Pro) Enterprise - contact us

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by rapnie on Sunday October 11, 2026 @10:22AM (#50043615)
I was confused by your mention of "Gleam", but I suppose it is just a generic name, not referring to Gleam [0], the functional programming language, as the latter is an example of a project that focuses on concise and minimalist documentation (btw, its README is just a reference to the website).

[0] https://gleam.run/

(Updated the text as the downvotes indicated people misunderstood what I wrote. I agree about OP's observation)

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by extralongdivisi on Sunday October 11, 2026 @11:12AM (#50044169)
The generated confusion ironically supports OP's point
Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by bethekidyouwant on Sunday October 11, 2026 @11:55AM (#50044616)
It’s never irony
Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by appplication on Sunday October 11, 2026 @12:30PM (#50044980)
It’s a bit funny how normalized this is. Surely being more clear would provide some market advantage?

Or perhaps not, if folks who need a Tribble for their Fork achieve instant enlightenment upon reading the marketing copy.

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by pinkmuffinere on Sunday October 11, 2026 @01:48PM (#50045822)
I recently had this experience with hotjar [0]. I _already use hotjar_ and still struggled to understand the page lol

If somebody from hotjar/cintentsquare sees this, I’d prefer if your page was more straightforward about the name change. Maybe try “we’ve rebranded to content square”

[0] https://contentsquare.com/hotjar/

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by bambax on Sunday October 11, 2026 @02:00PM (#50045941)
It also happens with marketing emails, or (worse) waiting lists: "great news, we're live!" -- Who the heck are you again?
Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by Analemma_ on Sunday October 11, 2026 @02:23PM (#50046202)
Now imagine living in San Francisco where you see this shit on every bus ad and billboard. Except these days they’re all “Tribbling. With agents. gleam.ai”
Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by da_chicken on Sunday October 11, 2026 @05:33PM (#50048035)
That's true.

But, I also see a lot of posts that have comments like, "How am I supposed to know what Gleam does when I don't know what a Tribble is? The blog doesn't explain anything! How can someone write an article and not explain these terms that they use so much?"

And the linked blog article is hosted in the Daily Tribble News section of www.tribbleworld.com.

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by chrisandchris on Monday October 12, 2026 @01:38AM (#50051781)
And cudos to OP, because I'm not into Mastodon but after reading the first section only I understand what his app does.
Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by blini-kot on Monday October 12, 2026 @04:25AM (#50053169)
finally someone mentioned this

I wholeheartedly hate that useless infantile names are so normalised in software industry, even libraries are as such, which at some point makes it just insane

Re:I paid people to try and follow my README by Mawr on Monday October 12, 2026 @04:32PM (#50062631)