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Comment by glaugh | Hacker News Reader

Apologies that this is about form not substance:

I appreciate the clarity of the "What makes Variance unique?" and "Where is Variance not a good fit?" sections. Really useful.

As someone who makes a data analysis tool (with a bit of viz thrown in), that's probably something we could do better.

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No apology necessary, as there isn't a useful distinction between "form" and "substance" here = )

My dev background is in the Clojure community, where Rich sets a strong tone about the importance of discussing tradeoffs. We outlined those tradeoffs explicitly on the site because that's always what's on the forefront of my mind when making a technical decision. I'm glad you found it helpful.

I came here to praise 'Where is Variance not a good fit?' as well. This is a great introduction, I wish everything had this level of detail on the landing page. I find it infuriating (everywhere from Unix command line to websites for new tools ) not to have a clear answer to the question of 'why you should/should not use this.'

I also admire the upfront and clear explanation. For people who are about to make a decision this helps immensely.

Everyone should learn from this: there is no point in overhyping or hiding things — I will discover these tradeoffs eventually anyway, so why not save everyone some time and clarify them upfront?

The "Where is Variance not a good fit?" section is useful. I'm not just saying that as a long time victim/critic of pie charts.

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