this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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34
Why I started Sublinks: A timeline of events (jasongr.im)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Exciting stuff! In particual I really like how neatly organized the project roadmap is, with a quick glance at the project GitHub page I can tell what you guys are working on and how development is proceding.

Also, props for using a widely established language like Java. I know Rust has lots of advantages and is all in all an awesome language, but having to learn a new language just to be able to contribute and submit PRs to your favourite open source project kinda kills the hype (and takes away a bunch of time).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Thanks so much! We're trying hard!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly i don't think these are good enough reasons to create a new project, there are other open source reddit alternatives and non of them toke off, it's hard to build a project like that and having NLNET funding might have made it seem easier then it is.

Forking might have been a better options, or just developing a sever addon API so you could create plugins like on wordpress or discourse.

I tend to believe competition is good but in this case it seems like it will just fragment the already limited resources of the fediverse.

I warned someone that the project he started probably won't replace an existing popular project and eventually he seems to have abandon it, he could have spend that time improving the existing project.

I realize this is not feel good advice and i could be wrong, but i felt like i should say it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What is an example of a good reason to start a new project?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

Where there is some important design decision that the project leaders don't want to change.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

all this because of misuse of the latest tag and unwillingness to downgrade the version? lol seems a little excessive but hopefully it turns out good

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

That’s an over simplified version. For the record, I couldn’t downgrade without data loss.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm all for competition within the Fediverse (that's a big strength of the Fediverse if you ask me). I just wish we'd move on from Java and other exception-based languages.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

What's wrong with exceptions?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

What @[email protected] said, but also they kind of have the same problem as goto. The control flow becomes very complicated and you can jump from one place in the code to another extremely far away.

Spooky action at a distance, basically.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Exceptions opt out of the type system. The problem with them is the same problem as null. Here's a video of the creator of null explaining: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare/

Null and errors are just values at the end of the day, and should be treated as such. Doing so means your code is far easier to reason about.

Rust takes this approach and is one of the many reasons people love it so much.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because exceptions are old and the new (recycled) kids are much more fun to play with? Or people yearn to implement the low level switch-case pattern error matching mechanism all over again, which try-catch-exceptions were solving.

I think there is no moving on from a paradigm as long as it has a function.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You should also include a link to sublinks or say what it is or something?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hey, I remember your issue with the latest tag! Shame I missed the spawn of sublinks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

You're watching the spawn now! It's still in development :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

So LW is helping build it???

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

So LW is helping build it???

Don't expect Lemmy.World to ever switch to it, though. Ruud sets up a new server for each bit of fediverse software. That's why Calckey.World will not migrate to the Sharkey fork of that software and its users will only get encouraged to move over on their own.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Yes, almost all team members are contributing code, designs, feature requests, etc. I called out @[email protected] specifically because he's been a major contributor. One of the admins is actively recruiting people to help contribute to Sublinks, this is how we got so much support so quickly. It's a very close collaboration. I owe a lot of thanks to the Lemmy.World team.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Looks like it was updated to add it lw details. That is curious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Interesting perspective

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Deja vu

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think he's trying to justify the project given some of the hate

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I really don't get why anyone would throw shade at another option being added in. The entire point of the fediverse is decentralization and choice. Having a fully compatible option for users and people wanting to run their own instance is a good thing. Kbin and mbin are an option, and now there'll be a third.

Keeping all the eggs in one basket just isn't a benefit, diversity of choice is. Even if they fuck up sublinks and it sucks, having it there is good. The argument that they should be working on lemmy instead just doesn't hold water. If someone is dissatisfied with a project, they won't be working on it at their best, if they even do keep working on it.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

I mean, it's a mixed bag, right?

Choice is good, but standardization is also good. The fediverse works because everyone unified around one standard. It wouldn't work if everyone did their own thing.

It's good because they're keeping going to be compatible with Lemmy, but for how long? How much pain is that going to cause?

In the end, I'm for it, for the same reason i support federating Threads, more choice for more people in the same space. The risks are largely the same too (although less likely).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I think a common fault people have in general, and especially in open source circles, is to consider everything a zero sum game.

Obviously it's not, and especially not in the Fediverse, but when did reality prevent anyone from being assholes on the internet?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago

im just not uses to a project thats not even 50% complete, broadcasting it to the general public as if it matters yet.

from a project management pov there are so many risks still on the table, just why would you do that?

i get they want to bring in devs or whatnot ( though this seems absent from the posts), but this blanketing of publicity over a incomplete thing is weird to me. there are plenty of dev channels.

seems like hype-building, which im kinda adverse to

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Has there been any hate? (honestly asking) I didn't catch any of it. I was just confused as to why one would choose Java for a web app, but other than that I welcome any new platform. Thats exactly what makes the fediverse great

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Lots of angry comments in the post announcing Sublinks in this community, mostly criticizing Java choice

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Language snobs will be snobby.

Meanwhile sublinks will enjoy a much much larger potential developer pool; how many people are actually proficient in Rust? It's an awesome language and it's getting more popular, but it's nowhere near the experience base of java.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

There was a fair amount specifically upset that the creators had not decided to focus their efforts on contributing to lemmy directly. I personally think that's silly as it's not hard to find folks who've tried and had a terrible experience.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People were reaching out to me to try to understand these details so I just made a blog post to just point people to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Great project! I wish y'all the best

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks a lot!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

All I could imagine is that Lemmy devs and others thought they were wasting their time and should contribute to Lemmy. And people didn't like Java as a choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

hope they are proved wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Thanks, me too!