markusstrasser

Author here. Somehow the worst thing I ever wrote is on the front page of HN.

I wrote this fast so there's jargon and bad prose. The title is deliberately dry and bland so I wasn't expecting anyone to click it. Also I slightly changed my mind on some of the claims .. might write up later.

The main reason I like to think of creative work in a more abstract/formal/geometric way (acceptance volume, latency, sampling) is it's easier for me categorize tasks, modalities and domains and know how to design or work around it. It's very much biased by more own experiences making things.

Also, abstract technical concept often come with nice guarantees/properties/utils to build on .. some would say that's their raison d'être.

Re comments: * "this is just diminishing returns" -- ok and this is a framework for why: the non-worsening region collapses, so most micro-edits fail

* "bands record bangers in an hour" –– practice tax was prepaid. The recording session is exploitation/search riding on cached heuristics imo (and it still takes hours of repeated recording/mixing/producing to actually produce a single album track).

* music key example –– yes I should've picked a different one. Main point was that some choices create wider tolerance (arrangement/range/timbre) even if keys are symmetric in equal temperament

the interesting web problems (collaborative tools, creative software, scientific computing) have to fight against a framework ecosystem designed for the blandest landing pages.

Nextjs and most web frameworks assume you're building an e-commerce site that has to only differentiate on loading speeds.

Fair enough. IMO the best solution is/was always hiccup (cljs) since it has no extra syntax to the core of the language (vectors/maps)

Wrong frame. It's just a playground

It's great people experiment. Yet, after a quick glance the framework seems to break expected semantics for no gain? For example: the "component" construct auto-renders the JSX within the brackets instead of being a function that "returns a view as value" (if I understood correctly). I'm cool with breaking the "f(x)=>UI" but what for? The TS and VS Code integration is all fine and good but what's the gain of using JSX (again) instead of the beloved HTML-like Svelte markup? Have people ever loved JSX? Nostalgia maybe? Again, I'm all for tearing down the house but shouldn't we get more elegance or expressive semantics in return?

Still, great he did it I just hope he'll be bolder next time! Of the 7 mentioned features 3-4 are not actually about the language but minor tooling hook ins (prettier, VSCode,) ... maybe that's the wrong focus.

Either way, the strong similarity with other JS/TS frameworks (semantics & syntax) suggests that for really new ideas the community should look elsewhere? Perhaps Clojurescript or Laravel (PhP) ...

smarter waifus for the wicked

It's a glorified youtube channel. Not a technology. That's most of the crux. It worked because Khan was early and made good content

Why are people getting hung up on his hubris? If his megalomania gives us Mathematica who cares. It's a phenomenal accomplishment. It can, out of the box, do hundreds of things that'd take you weeks in python/julia/etc or would be entirely impossible for most in other systems.

sad that this guy could've continued doing good CS research as assoc prof but instead is compelled to do youtube and sell productivity courses of the three same rehashed ideas ad infinitum.

+1

he's been following his own advice religiously for years