alt Hacker News> Apps may come and go, but files stay—at least, as long as our apps think in files.
yes: https://www.swyx.io/data-outlasts-code-but
all lasting work is done in files/data (can be parsed permissionlessly, still useful if partially corrupted), but economic incentives keep pushing us to keep things in code (brittle, dies basically when one of maintainer|buildtools|hardware substrate dies).
when standards emerge (forcing code to accept/emit data) that is worth so much to a civilization. a developer ecosystem tipping the incentive scales such that companies like the Googl/Msft/OpenAI/Anthropics of the world WANT to contribute/participate in data standards rather than keep things proprietary is one of the most powerful levers we as a developer community collectively hold.
(At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards... although honestly outside of Chrome I struggle to think of a truly successful example)
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Indeed. My first reaction was:
> Files are the source of truth—the apps would reflect whatever’s in your folder.
Now that the "app" is a web site that supports itself with advertising revenue, it has no incentive whatsoever to work this way.
> At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards
Is ATProto actually a standard? But regardless, nothing prevents Bluesky from enschitifying.
I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even.
It feels like the entire pitch is based on some FOMO factor “oh but my posts” - do people really care that much about their short form outbursts? I mean the whole point of twitter was to post and forget but maybe not for everybody.
Nice to see you :) I didn't know the "indirection" law, that's funny.
I think that's an overly charitable take. Giving Google/MSFT/OpenAI/Anthropic what they want does not guarantee a return on dividends. Standards are nice, but Apple is a giant testament to the fact that all the standards in the world won't move an adequately entrenched business.
> a developer ecosystem tipping the incentive scales such that companies like the Googl/Msft/OpenAI/Anthropics of the world WANT to contribute/participate
I think Apache Arrow has achieved exactly that [1]. It's also very file-friendly, in that Arrow IPC files are self describing, zero-copy, and capable of representing almost any data structure.
[1] https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/apache-arrow/co...