...mention the importance of software "quality", documentation, and other formal criteria for deserving your Github stars...
only then to later insist that you didn't
I insist that I didn't
because I didn't. You're the one that assumed that, because I suggested documentation was needed in certain areas, this is all about some formal process. It's not: I'm suggesting documentation is needed in certain places and the like not because any formal system says "documentation is necessary," but because I'm looking at that particular project and what would make my life easier if I were trying to build it. Nothing formal at all about that; it's all entirely ad-hoc.
This particularly tweaks me because I'm very much not a fan of formal process and ceremony, except in certain particular circumstances, and this is not one of those circumstances. Basically, you're interpreting what I say in the light of, "if he asks for documentation, he must be a formal-methods troll," rather than actually looking at the particular situation. Which seems to be a facet of many of your arguments: "I want to look at something simple, not look at the details." Well, I'm sorry, but the world works on details, and attempts to over-simplify and avoid doing the work of properly understanding something lead you to erroneous results.
...and/or that the other conversation partner didn't understand your argument or does not have your experience, seniority, or wisdom to understand you in the first place. That makes any communication impossible.
Well, you clearly
didn't understand much of what I said, because you replied with straw man arguments. Yes, communication isn't possible if you are going to filter everything others say through your own preconceptions.
....(you, the GitHub user; the SO contributor with thousands of up-votes; you, the publisher of peer reviewed paper that you defended against the world...
You seem to be implying that I am making arguments from authority. Well, I disagree; I provide that information only so you can understand that this is stuff I've actually used an interacted with, and where I've dealt with the problems that arise during that use; I feel I'm also providing clear reasons for my arguments that do not depend on whether or not I've published a paper or whatever.
But you should feel free to explain the experience that leads you to the arguments and assertions you make. You make statements that appear to embody knowledge about, e.g., publishing an academic paper, but aren't consistent with my experience doing so. Given that you're not describing your experiences but merely making assertions, that really makes you come across as someone who
hasn't done any of this stuff but thinks he knows how to do it.
(And that started right at the beginning, where you dismissed the work of the folks who did the Model I PCB replica as being, "more of a 'busy' kind of work that does not require any advanced (software or hardware) engineering skills or advanced understanding of the TRS-80 architecture." Reading though that repo, and understanding what they've done, this comes across to me as, essentially, "you have no idea what you're talking about," and the only other person here who's commented on this particular issue agrees with me. Yet you show no sign of either providing further evidence for or backing off on your claim.)
; you, the senior developer who has the impertinence to leave an "exercise" for me, maybe I get as wise as you!)
How is this impertinent? You're making unsupported and, I believe, very incorrect claims, and I'm suggesting a process that can provide tangible proof that your claims are incorrect. It seems that
every time I suggest starting in on something that would actually show you have any experience with these sorts of projects (or would give you some of that experience), you back off and just repeat your unsupported arguments.
And I notice that you're very careful never to claim experience with any of the things you're talking about? Do you have any experience in this area? Because I do, and it sounds to me as if you don't know what you're talking about.
If you do have experience that contradicts mine, that's fine. Explain it and explain why that leads you to different conclusions than me. If not, you're just making up stuff as you go, and arguing against the real world.
I think if you want to discuss things with people and care for their opinion, you might also sometimes give a little bit in a conversation. At least acknowledge that there are different positions, different value systems, different opinions, and acknowledge that, try to understand the other conversation partner's perspective.
I believe I understand your perspectives.
- You think that FreHD is more useful than the Model I PCB replica. Fine. It is more useful to you, and that's unarguable. And it may well be more useful to more people overall.
- You think that FreHD is a more technically sophisticated project than the PCB replica. Well, as someone who's had experience working on both kinds of things, and who's looked reasonably carefully at the details of the two projects, I think you're wrong, and so do other people here. You claim background in working on keyboard PCB replicas, which I believe, but you clearly don't understand that a keyboard PCB is a much simpler thing than a motherboard PCB, or you wouldn't even have started with that comparison. So I think you're arguing from ignorance here.
- You feel that GitHub stars should be used for a certain purpose. Well, they're not used for that purpose, and never will be for all your wishing, and are unsuited for that purpose for reasons I've explained in depth. You don't like that; well, there's nothing I can do about that, and it's your right not to like it. But if you want projects you like to get the recognition you think they deserve, tilting at windmills is not the way to do it.
Time to wake up: developers AND GitHub users are a diverse, non-uniform group of people with different likes and dislikes and value system - well, you will say: these are not developers! But, they are, and you are in no position to speak for all of them!
No, I
won't say "they're not developers," and I fully agree that whoever you're talking about are a diverse group of people with different likes and dislikes. What I
will say is that GitHub is designed for use by developers, for their particular purposes, and you're swooping in and trying tell all of us that we should be doing our stars differently, and also bringing in an entirely new and much larger crowd of non-developers so that the stars can mean the thing you want them to mean, rather than what they really do mean. Now
that's quite an amazing amount of impudence.
