> Software is a social service. Its for other humans.
I deeply disagree with this Calvinist utilitarian sentiment. Its akin to saying sex is for making babies. Maybe its an academic thing - When I went to grad school for CS, on Day 1 my Algorithms Professor paraphrased Perlis's famous quote on the blackboard - "Shaft the paying customer!"
You can find the whole quote on the first page of SICP[1], or elsewhere[2]. imho its a highly toxic sentiment to think that whatever a programmer does is for other humans. Software as a Social Service...SAAS :)
imho the best software is written to scratch a personal itch. Not to appease this customer. Not for other humans. Not as a social service. In fact all the people I deeply admire in the software world - Arthur Whitney, Kenneth Iverson, Mattis & Kimball, Perlis, Dijkstra, hell even Linus, are generally characterized as egotistical assholes in the public space who really don't give a flying fuck about social service & humans but care deeply about the software they created for their own selfish reasons.
Mattis is quite explicit about this - "You should understand that the GIMP and GTK weren't written to fill holes in the software available under the GPL...GIMP was started because I wanted to make a Web page. GTK was started because I was dissatisfied with Motif...These are purely selfish reasons. That is probably why the projects...eventually succeeded. I find it much more difficult to work on something for selfless reasons."
Perlis - "I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn."
otoh the people I deeply detest in software (too numerous to name) are generally these do-gooder types who write software to save the world & provide social service, employment to the masses, add "value" insert-marketing-speak-here etc...
I'm ok with the hypocrisy in pretending to care about software as a social service because I need to put food on the table like any other programmer on the market, but deep inside, I write code only for myself. I think a big fraction of developers are like that. There's no harm in saying it out loud.
> imho the best software is written to scratch a personal itch. Not to appease this customer. Not for other humans.
This statement shows you partially understand, but don't understand the why. You recognize that people working on software for things they truly care about can write better more successful software, but you miss the final step of why that software is more successful.
The reason why Linus can write such great software for software engineers is because he is a software engineer. Fundamentally the software you love is successful for other people, it is for other people and because your idols are one of those people part of that group, they understand it as well as anyone.
Linux was made for passionate hobbyist programmers by a passionate hobbyist programmer. And because it is made for those people, and met their needs perfectly is why it caught on. The reason it met their needs is because Linus understood their needs, because he shared them.
That's the key piece - that great software is written by completely meeting users needs. The easiest way to understand and meet other people's needs is by sharing them. That's the final step of it.
Fundamentally software becomes successful by meeting other people's needs. Anything else that doesn't, you've never heard of.
What do you mean by "best"? If it is supposed to be judged by the original author of the software alone, your opinion does not matter. If you think your opinion of software written by others matters, then BAM, you've acknowledged what you set out to refute, i.e. Software is written for (or at least its quality can be judged by) other humans. (Unless you're actually a GPT-3 bot in disguise, in which case you win :D)
What you might have shown is that software not written for others can still be great in the eyes of other people, but even that is somewhat nuanced. IIRC one of Linus' egotistical outbursts was triggered by a kernel dev intentionally breaking user-space compatibility. At least in this case Linus' example doesn't support your claims.
I also don't see why "software is written for other humans" necessarily snuffs the fun or interesting aspects out of it. There certainly are large number of un-fun software that serves a commercial purpose, but it doesn't mean that fun software has to be anti-social. Even entries submitted to IOCCC (purposely obfuscated C code written purely for fun) sometimes lead to useful stuff (Fabrice Bellard's work).
> provide social service, employment to the masses,
If I want the computer to do XYZ, and I can provide an XYZ service to other people? They're paying me to do my bug testing, and I get to feel good about it.
If you're providing something that you think is a really good service, but not for people like you, and not for somebody specific you know either, it's probably going to be rubbish.
So if Linus works on Linux for his own selfish reasons, howcome Linux isn't a one-person effort that nobody else is using? And why did they pick the GPL?
It sounds to me like you're describing bad social behavior but generally altruistic motivations with good social behavior but non-altruistic motivations, and you prefer the former over the latter. Sure, thats fine.
I deeply disagree with this Calvinist utilitarian sentiment. Its akin to saying sex is for making babies. Maybe its an academic thing - When I went to grad school for CS, on Day 1 my Algorithms Professor paraphrased Perlis's famous quote on the blackboard - "Shaft the paying customer!"
You can find the whole quote on the first page of SICP[1], or elsewhere[2]. imho its a highly toxic sentiment to think that whatever a programmer does is for other humans. Software as a Social Service...SAAS :)
imho the best software is written to scratch a personal itch. Not to appease this customer. Not for other humans. Not as a social service. In fact all the people I deeply admire in the software world - Arthur Whitney, Kenneth Iverson, Mattis & Kimball, Perlis, Dijkstra, hell even Linus, are generally characterized as egotistical assholes in the public space who really don't give a flying fuck about social service & humans but care deeply about the software they created for their own selfish reasons.
Mattis is quite explicit about this - "You should understand that the GIMP and GTK weren't written to fill holes in the software available under the GPL...GIMP was started because I wanted to make a Web page. GTK was started because I was dissatisfied with Motif...These are purely selfish reasons. That is probably why the projects...eventually succeeded. I find it much more difficult to work on something for selfless reasons."
Perlis - "I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn."
otoh the people I deeply detest in software (too numerous to name) are generally these do-gooder types who write software to save the world & provide social service, employment to the masses, add "value" insert-marketing-speak-here etc...
I'm ok with the hypocrisy in pretending to care about software as a social service because I need to put food on the table like any other programmer on the market, but deep inside, I write code only for myself. I think a big fraction of developers are like that. There's no harm in saying it out loud.
[1]https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmQ3C4ooSCmBMuK7mKq4sqVAfGq...
[2]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/405620-i-think-that-it-s-ex...