If someone wants to get help, and they end up on Stack Overflow, the structure looks like a Q/A site, and they treat it that way. The people "in the know" then accuse them of being "bad" for posting a question to a documentation site. Combine that with the gamification, and it had to turn into the toxic mess that it did.

When I first heard of the gamification method of moderation, I thought it was a really good idea. But, over the years, it has proven to be a means to enforce an echo chamber, rather than a way to filter out bad posts. I have yet to find a site (HN included), where that isn't true.

Ok, so, how many of us see something like this, and instantly just want to do it ourselves in our own way? I've seen at least 5 different versions of a "self-hosting platform" make their way on HN, sometimes more than once, but every time I really look at them, they just don't fit quite right, and often end up abandoned a while later. I've tried to make my own, and never have gotten anywhere worth sharing, and the couple times I've tried what others have made, I haven't been able to do what I want.

I mean the idea is really good. Make it easy to host apps for yourself and your family. But it seems like we're all more interested in building the platform than actually picking one, or two, platforms and turning them into something sustainable...

Anyway, what would it take for you to actually use something like this that someone else built?

Or am I just dealing with a bad case of not-invented-here?

If you view one of those cases as a bad result, then chances are you are biased.

That said, if you downvote because you have looked into the cases enough to think that that similarity is not valid, and then you can articulate it (like the person I'm replying too did) then I'd consider that fine. (Assuming they downvoted, they may not have.) I may still think there's some bias there, but it's not uninformed bias.

If you can't articulate a reason you want to downvote, then it's bias and emotion fueling your downvote. Which, I don't consider to be a valid reason to downvote.

As a side note, I think we all need to be aware of how similar the things we hear about the "bad" side are. The comments I see about Trump weaponizing the Department of Justice to oppress people is pretty much exactly what I saw said about Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice to oppress people during his administration. I also have seen MANY comments where if you replace "Biden" or "Trump" with the other name, you end up with a comment the other side would make. I think that should trigger some self-reflection. I know I'm still trying to figure out what to think about it.

To those of you downvoting, please articulate why you think something deserves a downvote. As it is, I can only assume rather hypocritical double standards. Someone saying something anti-Trump is ok, but someone saying something anti-Leftist (or Clinton) is not?

(For the record, I 100% am on the side of the guy who was jailed. Just as I am on for the guy who retweeted that meme in 2016. Abusing government power is unacceptable no matter who it benefits.)

That said, someday I need to give NixOS a try.

Augeas seems interesting. I'll have to look into it a bit more than my cursory glance at the github issue queue. :)

Thanks!

I mean, the problem I want to solve is real. Configuring containerized applications is always annoying. Currently I either end up baking the configuration into the image, or using a pre-script to convert environment variables into the configuration I actually need before the app starts. Usually via bash scripts... (Or I have to decipher which method the official image uses. If they have one.)

My idea was to just have a little rust tool in my containers that would take the contents of environment variables and turn them into whatever format (toml, yaml, ini, etc.) the app needs. The problem was how do I represent all the different kinds of values you can have in a language? Lists, key/value lists, associative arrays, maps, etc...

Figuring out how to do that, well, isn't that just yet another configuration language?

And that is why I'm posting this question. Has any real effort ever been put into standardizing configuration languages/syntaxes?

If so, why'd they fail? If not, why not?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163624

Points: 3

# Comments: 5

True. I quit trying to do anything there once I realized that SO was fundamentally not useful to me. It advertised as a gamified Q&A platform, but was actually a knowledge base psudeo wiki thing structured in way that didn't lend itself to answering the questions I needed answered.

So, I think a lot of the negative reactions are deserved, because SO looks like something it isn't.

People want a place to get help. SO looks like a place to get help. But SO is a place to ask for help only if your problem fits a specific set of requirements. And since most problems will never meet said requirements, most people can never actually get help on SO.

I post this in part because I'm still saltly about how much time I wasted trying to get help only to get downvoted, but also because if SO actually wants to do what they say, they really need to restructure into something that actually looks like what they want to be.

My suggestion would be to have two sites, one that is actually a general Q&A site like what everyone is after, the other is the kind of knowledge repository that SO wants to be. Then you just promote the really good questions from the Q&A site into the other site.

I'd also recommend ending the whole "downvote" idea. I have yet to see it not result in cliques and in discriminating against viewpoints the people with downvote permissions don't like. Let a lack of upvotes cause poor content to drop to the bottom.

Man, I should find time to dig into Gentoo again.

And, yes, software working on your OS is not a minor point. That's the whole reason I used to go with the "best tool for the job" approach. Windows Recall is what changed that for me. I can't see using an OS with spyware built in as a "feature".

In my opinion, Apple is no more trustworthy than Microsoft, so...

> It’s a big deal for people who do things other than use a browser, text editor, and terminal.

So, the number of video editing, photo editing, CAD, gaming, and so on tools that work on Linux has grown a LOT. It's not just for basic stuff. You can do almost anything you need to on Desktop Linux. Yes, a lot of things are rough around the edges, but they're that way because people haven't invested in them, not because they're bad tools.

It also makes me wonder what it would take for IT people to finally stop gritting their teeth about having to use, or having to let others use, Windows and start just dealing with the learning curve of switching to some Linux distro. I mean, Windows Recall is spyware. If it didn't come from Microsoft, Windows Defender would be sure to mark it as malicious... What's the name for a screenshot based keylogger I wonder...

I used to just figure that Windows was just all some people could use. And if that was the best tool for them, then ok. But now? I can't say that anymore. It's out and out malware at this point.

In all seriousness, if you are sticking with Windows at this point, why? Is it just the fact your other software doesn't work on another OS? Or is there something good about Windows that you like?

Symfonium looks interesting. I think it actually does support the multiple artists and genres like I want. Thanks for the tip on that one!

Thanks for the tip.

My mother likes to get cards and other things using her photos, but she is continually having horrible experiences with the sites she's tried. And every time I go to help, I find UI's that are just not well designed. Sometimes I have to switch her over to Chrome, other times nothing makes it better.

Today, Walmart's site wouldn't even let me try to log her into her account in Chrome, just kept showing me "are you human" pages. And in Firefox, their photo app is clearly not working very well. The preview for the Christmas card was tiny until I switched her system font size from 150% to 100% scaling. Then it got bigger. And Firefox console was full of security warnings.

Shutterfly is not very good either, she consistently has to redo entire projects (that take her hours to put together) before it works, and it's hit or miss on if it works in Firefox or Chrome.

Are there any photo printing services out there that have UIs that: A) Work. B) Were designed with the elderly in mind?

Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42028572

Points: 13

# Comments: 7

I think there multiple kinds of docs for software.

* Comments explaining a specific section of code.

* API docs describing functions/classes/etc.

* Docs on how to use a library/class/etc. Usually including simple, isolated, examples.

* Tutorials on how to create simplified applications using the developed tools.

* Docs on how to deploy, configure, and maintain an application.

* Docs on how to use an application.

* Docs on how to troubleshoot an application.

* Docs on how to integrate applications.

* And likely others I'm missing.

Personally, I've been seriously frustrated by how bad most of the open source (haven't done much with proprietary code) documentation is. Case in point is Drupal and Symfony. Trying to use api.drupal.org is not fun, and Symfony's docs always cover the basics, and then there's nothing on pulling everything together into something complicated. So you try to dig into the actual code, and end up finding multiple layers of uncommented abstractions. Yes, I can eventually figure out what is going on if I put the effort in, but that's a lot of time that could be save by a few lines of comments.

I usually end up asking JetBrains AI about what I need, then use what it says after I fix the errors it makes... It's also very good at summarizing everything I'd find if I used a normal search. But that all only works if others have already asked and answered my questions.

Some things I've been trying to do to improve my own code's documentation:

* Unless the line is super obvious, even if I think it is obvious, I try to leave a comment. Yes, it seems pointless, but I have gone back to old code I remember being obvious without said comment enough times that I think it is worth it.

* Avoiding "elegance" in favor of "explicitness". For example, I use full `if` statements instead of ternary operators even when ternary operators would look better. For whatever reason the syntax of ternary operators has never sunk in for me, and the explicitness of `if` is much easier to parse. I also use very descriptive function and variable names. Basically, if I have to think about what something means, I try to change it so I don't have to.

* Split out functions into smaller functions as much as I can't. This means I can use descriptive function names. And I'm pretty sure it's just good practice.

I also have been trying to figure out ways to keep higher level docs closer to my code. I have some ideas, but haven't tried them yet. Has anyone ever written something that detects changes to a method/function, and then when you save your file it pops up asking if related docs need updating? Maybe add comments to the method pointing to where related docs live, and then your IDE/tool uses that to know what docs need updating?