Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

This mattered six or seven years ago (around when the project started). It's since evolved/devolved in a half dozen different directions, tried to take on too many markets at once, and failed to ship working code repeatedly, all the while running at full speed in every direction at once.

Everything it set out to do (basically, it started as an ambitious Open Source effort to replace Exchange, though it evolved over time into a P2P something or other and now appears to be a really complicated todo list manager) has been replaced by web-based tools. Chandler seems to have a web-based version...but it's not the focus, and so it will never gain traction.

So, basically, a six and a half year long project has produced a todo list application. I'm happy that they've finally shipped code, and I hope it signals an end to the crazy tilting at windmills that all of the folks involved have spent so much time doing. Someone should have pointed them to http://bikeshed.com/ years ago.

There was a whole book written about the failure of Chandler: Dreaming in Code.

I just finished reading most of this book, didn't make it all the way through. I had a goal of reading it before 1.0.

Interesting story, and I'm sure most people would see at least a few parallels to their own projects.

Yes, I've read some of it (had to put it down because it was simply too painful to think about so much wasted effort). I once followed the project with interest. I was on the mailing lists, read the docs, checked out the early code, etc. I perhaps take it too personally because I did expect great things from the Chandler team. I just expected those great things five years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words

I don't know if the parent post was edited, but I don't see too many weasel words there.

No editing. I'm not known for being subtle in my criticism or avoiding taking blame for the things I say. As you say, I don't think I was avoiding taking any responsibility for my criticism, and I'd welcome arguments to the contrary if anyone would like to defend Chandler. (And note that I'm not calling the developers idiots or incompetent, and never would...we all probably accept that they're smart folks who lacked leadership and specific vision.)

I was referring to "appears to be" and "seems to have".

Not weasel in the same sense as "people say" but just as content free. Is it just a todo list app, or is it something else/more? Does it have a web-based version, or does it not?

Not weasel in the same sense as "people say" but just as content free. Is it just a todo list app, or is it something else/more? Does it have a web-based version, or does it not?

Obviously, I'm not sure, which is why I used the terms. I don't think you actually understand the purpose of my post, which was partly to point out that Chandler has been unfocused from the beginning. I don't know exactly what Chandler is because Chandler has been many things in its 6 and a half year life.

I briefly glanced over the project wiki, and gathered what I could without spending an inordinate amount of time there. From what I could gather from the rather verbose, and enterprisey documentation, the things I said seem true to me, but I can't be sure, because I haven't used the project and I haven't followed it in years.

As others have mentioned, this is not an encyclopedic article and I make no claims to expertise or authority on the topic. I made comments about my thoughts and opinions and presented them as such, as we all do on a daily basis here. Those comments seem to be interesting to many HN readers, and I'm sorry you don't consider them authoritative enough for a Hacker News discussion.

I appear to have now run out of things to say on the subject.

Why is a Wikipedia "style guideline" relevant to a comment on HN? Wikipedia guidelines are for writing encyclopedic content, not for comments on a discussion site.

It's a general writing guideline, not specific to encyclopedias. It was the wrong choice though because "weasel words" can imply "weakening meaning in order to avoid contradiction" which wasn't what I meant to imply at all.

There may be a correct term for the "It might be the case that X, and if so my opinion is Y, but it also might not be the case because I don't actually have any first-hand experience with the thing I'm talking about--just speculation" form of speech, but I don't know what it is.

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