Name It, and They Will Come
Even if you don&#x27;t understand the point the author is trying to make, this part you should be able to understand perfectly, and I find it a perfectly accurate description of what happens 90% of the time:<p>= = = =<p>The top comment thread picks on the coding style in a README example. It turns into an argument about indentation with over a hundred replies and a brief history of how different programming languages approached formatting. There are obligatory mentions of gofmt and Python. Have you tried Prettier?<p>Somebody mentions that open source projects shouldn’t have beautiful landing pages because it’s misleading marketing. What if a junior developer falls for it without fully understanding the fundamentals?<p>In a response, somebody argues the landing page design is boring. Additionally, it’s broken in Firefox. Clearly, this means the project author doesn’t care about the open web. Is the web as we know it dying? It’s time for some game theory…<p>The next comment is a generic observation about the nature of abstractions, and how they can lead to too much “boilerplate” (or, alternatively, “magic”). The top reply explains that one shouldn’t confuse “simple” with “easy”. Actually, Rich Hickey gave a very good talk about this. Have you watched it?<p>Finally, why do we need libraries at all? Some languages do well with a built-in standard library. Is npm a mistake? The leftpad accident could happen again. Should we build npm right into the browser? What about the standards?<p>Confused, you close the tab.