Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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