Re:Here's the basic problem: you're writing a text editor. S...
by neilc on Friday December 28, 2007 @06:15PM
(#93341)
That post is stupid, and the author comes off like a condescending know-it-all.
(1) If someone wants to write a text-editor, what's it to you? There are countless independent software projects, the vast majority of which are developing new versions/implementations of a pre-existing concept. Look at mail clients: there are hundreds, and they all still basically suck, IMHO. The fact that there is clearly an audience for this style of editor suggests that there is something valuable about these editors that is not found in older editors (I don't use them, so I don't know).
(2) Text editing is a fundamental activity; if we could improve its efficiency by even a few percent, that would be enormously useful. Developing a slightly better solitaire game, say, is far less useful than developing a text editor that makes people (even a small group of people) more productive.
(3) The griping about runtime size is inane. "You're bitching about 22MB language runtimes. Stop doing that. It's 2007.", one could say. If you need a very small editor, there are already 10+ to choose from, and a dependency on a .NET/Java runtime is otherwise not a big deal.
(4) As for the evidence-free claim that the people using these products are analogous to "script kiddies", and that the "real authors" don't use them -- well, not sure any further comment is needed.
(1) If someone wants to write a text-editor, what's it to you? There are countless independent software projects, the vast majority of which are developing new versions/implementations of a pre-existing concept. Look at mail clients: there are hundreds, and they all still basically suck, IMHO. The fact that there is clearly an audience for this style of editor suggests that there is something valuable about these editors that is not found in older editors (I don't use them, so I don't know).
(2) Text editing is a fundamental activity; if we could improve its efficiency by even a few percent, that would be enormously useful. Developing a slightly better solitaire game, say, is far less useful than developing a text editor that makes people (even a small group of people) more productive.
(3) The griping about runtime size is inane. "You're bitching about 22MB language runtimes. Stop doing that. It's 2007.", one could say. If you need a very small editor, there are already 10+ to choose from, and a dependency on a .NET/Java runtime is otherwise not a big deal.
(4) As for the evidence-free claim that the people using these products are analogous to "script kiddies", and that the "real authors" don't use them -- well, not sure any further comment is needed.