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Comment by oldandtired | Hacker News Reader

For a private endeavour, whether he finishes or not is completely up to him. When he puts it out for all to see, this then changes the dynamic under which he is moving forward.

If he had said he was stopping due to life commitments or family situations, etc, then these kinds of things take priority, as they should. No problems or issues should arise from that. But he has stated that he is giving up because it now involves doing the hard yards to complete the project - this does not show him in a good light.

In essence, he is saying that once something has become non-interesting in whatever way, then he will give up and move onto something else that will hold his interest. In other words, he is committed to a course of action only when it holds his focus, but that he will happily drop it when it becomes hard work.

I really don't think that he was intentionally going out to say that he is undependable. This is what he has said though.

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A more charitable explanation is (in his words), "it’s no longer fulfilling my goals, and it’s not as fun as it once was."

When I look at it from his point of view, I feel quite sorry for him. The language's forum has 9 posts in the last calendar year. 4 of those are him solving a problem using Leaf. Then, I check out the status page and realize that, for all the work he has done, Leaf is still in a very primitive state.

I'd equate it to being like a startup. At some point, it stops making sense. Then, you can either ride the ship down into the depths, or hop out when the going is as good as it will get.

As for his dependability, I've got to tell you that, from my perspective, anyone who can pull this off is more than impressive enough.

I think he should be awfully impressed with what he did. And, I don't think it's even remotely fair to judge him as being undependable. Based on what I've seen, I think he should have pulled the plug last year, when he first wanted to quit.

Maybe it is a change of times, but when he got into the detail of why he was quitting, it was about the hard work ahead, which is rarely fun for most people.

I don't feel sorry for him at all. He found something that was of interest to him and he decided to head down a path towards that interest. Good on him. Kudos to him for giving it a go. However, the problem he has made for himself is that he went public far too soon and is now publicly saying he is quitting because there is too much hard work ahead for him.

Startups have a low rate of success and is about testing an idea that has a good likelihood of failure. Different proposition to start with. The more appropriate comparison is making some item that can be useful to you but has a lot of tedious and fiddly work to be done. In his case it was a computer language which always comes with implementation problems to do deal with. One knows this up front, or at least, should know this.

The problem is, he hasn't pulled it off - there is still a long way to go. One of my areas of interest is language design, compiler construction of virtual machine implementation. This subject matter is highly complex, tedious in many ways and requires a great deal of patience and perseverance. For each problem you solve, more arise to be solved.

For an individual, this can be daunting when you finally realise that you have undertaken a massive project. It is especially so, if the language that you have designed doesn't strike a cord in other people. But if you have a goal in mind, then continue on even through the tedium that will come.

Things will always get in the way of you completing side projects, that's life, but you can still keep chipping away as the years go on.

I'm in my forties and the times have not changed that much. We have a limited number of hours on this planet, and we don't know how limited they are until they're already mostly spent. We can slave away doing things we don't gain anything from, or we can go out and take control of our happiness.

This fellow doesn't get paid for his work on Leaf and he works on it during his already spare time. He would gain more doing creative tasks - he wants to "do graphics, write music, make some games and record some videos."

It has nothing to do with hard work and everything to do with allocating his time in the way he most wants to. He is taking control of his own happiness and that is admirable.

Thank you.

I have a lot of respect for you and what you did. Thanks for being inspiring and good luck with whatever you work on next.

^ I don't see it as indicating undesirable character at all. I read the piece as more an indication that the guy knows when to cut his losses and stop allocating resources to unprofitable activity. Which to me, from a business perspective, is a sign of someone with their head screwed on straight.

I also don't grasp the logic behind the notion that once a creator shows his work -- or work-in-progress -- to the public that he is somehow bound by duty, honor, respect for his 'followers', or some other compelling consideration, to finish that work.

If Beethoven starts writing a string quartet, and posts the first movement on the internet, but then realizes that the Duke isn't going to commission it and he'd rather be writing a sonata anyway, does it really reflect badly on LvB if he abandons the quartet?

> I also don't grasp the logic behind the notion that once a creator shows his work -- or work-in-progress -- to the public that he is somehow bound by duty, honor, respect for his 'followers', or some other compelling consideration, to finish that work.

You can show off your work in any way that you want. You are also not bound by duty or anything else to finish that work. However, if you are putting it out there for other to see and or use, at least say that this may or may not be useful in some way. To cover yourself, you could say that it will be a work in progress and that the progress will move in fits and starts as you have time to devote to it. At that point, there will never be a need to say that you are giving up on it.

Bad comparison with Beethoven. But to answer your question, if he had said that this is the first movement and may have a potential to be completed if the Duke commissions it, then it doesn't reflect badly on him when the Duke doesn't commission it.

It is a matter of what expectation you are creating in those who are viewing your work. If you are saying that it is there as an example of something, then so it is. But if you go out and say "here is the bee's knees", and then you decide that it is no longer worth your while because the amount of work is now too much, then you have created the problem for yourself.

There is a project called Axiom, which has inspired me to look at my own code and projects in a different light. But to follow in the footsteps presented by Axiom in my own projects involves a lot of tedious hard work. The benefit that I see is that anyone who comes after me and is interested in what I have done will be able to follow. That "anyone" may only ever be me, so be it.

Pretty much nobody but you has this perspective, it's completely irrelevant to the reality other people live in. And such a perspective is harmful, as it could discourage people from work under the false perception that an unfinished piece of work is worse than none.

I'm not sure where you got this whole idea from, but it's not true, neither in the real sense nor in the perceived sense. People benefit from working on projects they do not finish, and plenty of people are impressed with unfinished projects. This person is going to be a much better developer than average from this experience. There is literally no issue here. It's his work and it's his time and what he does with it is none of anyone else's business.

The only issue here is you making an issue out of it according to some strange ethical norms that nobody else shares. This is a massive overthinking/overjudge and the thinking here is rather unhealthy.

See my responses elsewhere in this discussion. Simply put, he is closing down the project because to continue requires too much hard work and is boring and uninteresting. It is not that he has found an answer to his investigations and so he can move on and here are the lessons learned.

Yet I suspect that the intent of what he may have wanted to say is that final sentence above. But that's not what he said.

I'll say it again, there is no problem with unfinished work, if what you were trying to achieve has been completed.

But please, don't then say that you won't complete the work your doing because to do so would require hard work and it's just boring and tedious. This is what reflects negatively on you.

If you have achieved your goal then just say that and show what has been learned from the exercise. If you would like it to be continued but can't do so for whatever reason, which you do not have to state, then offer it to anyone else who might be able to take it on. You never know, you might get some takers. This reflects positively on you.

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