Handmade: A Community for Self-Rolled Performant Software (2016)
The Handmade metaphor masks a key difference between software and physical goods. IIUC, mass-produced physical goods are inferior to their handmade counterparts because of the trade-offs that enable profitable mass production. So we have a strong emotional attachment to handmade things being better, and the Handmade movement plays on that emotional attachment.<p>But the metaphor breaks down if you think about it. A carpenter making a single piece of furniture can tailor it to the person who will be sitting on it. A cook making a meal for one person can tailor it to their dietary requirements or tastes. But software of any non-trivial scale is rarely written for one person. Even when it&#x27;s developed according to the ideals of the Handmade movement, it will be mass-distributed.<p>I actually think that, contrary to our intuition about handmade things, Handmade software tends to have compromises compared to software that builds on well-established components. I won&#x27;t repeat miki123211&#x27;s top-level comment [1]. I&#x27;ll just add here that it&#x27;s precisely the economics of large-scale software distribution that allow concerns such as internationalization and accessibility to be addressed, while a solo Handmade project will probably not have these important things.<p>So, while slinging JavaScript code with no regard for performance and packaging it with Electron is certainly not the ideal, I strongly believe that the Handmade approach isn&#x27;t either. As is so often the case, we need a middle ground.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24186711" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24186711</a>