Source
- URL: https://x.com/gfxstrand/status/1473456049059422209
- Author: Faith Ekstrand 🏳️⚧️ (@gfxstrand)
- Posted: 2021-12-22 00:51:12
Branch
1/ @gfxstrand
@dneto1969 @redgpus @cmuratori @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
Oh, come on. Just admit that you know everything already. 😜
More seriously, David’s right. Everyone’s got to start somewhere. The important thing is that you productively engage instead of just being critical from the sidelines.
2/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
This is a lie, though. Nobody actually wants you to productively engage. The current system is set up specifically such that even expert programmer’s concerns are typically ignored in favor of whatever the short-term interests of the people at the table are.
3/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
I’ve been trying to get APIs to not suck for 20 years. Eventually you just give up. I criticize from the sidelines now because that’s the only thing left to do. You can forget about ever getting any of these standards to be good. The process and incentives are simply not there.
4/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
And this literally goes all the way back to 1997 when I signed the open letter urging Microsoft not to make a new 3D API, and instead keep OpenGL as the standard on Windows, so there wouldn’t be a proliferation of APIs. And we all know how that turned out.
5/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
The truth is that none of this matters. APIs and substrates will suck until the process for producing them is radically altered, and hard metrics involving development time and performance replace things like people sitting around talking about stuff like text vs. binary.
6/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
Modern API and standardization represents the very worst efforts of the tech industry: it is a process driven by dogma and opinion, with almost no concrete process for evaluating quality, nor any actual feedback mechanism on the people involved.
7/ @cmuratori
@jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @Jonathan_Blow @johnkslang
If the spec comes out and it sucks, nobody loses their job, or their seat on the committee, or anything. The W3C has been shipping grotesquely inadequate APIs across a broad spectrum of disciplines for decades and there have been essentially no consequences.
8/ @Jonathan_Blow
@cmuratori @jekstrand_ @dneto1969 @redgpus @johnkslang
Oh, there have been plenty of consequences … just none for the members of the W3C … that they understand.