Starting on something new ... it's much easier to keep refining the previous project.

This. Just think, when you code (whether is actual coding or thinking up code designs) , what's most difficult to you? Seriously, not that complex and pretty interesting to know other's peoples ideas on what the difficult part of programming is (hint: it's not the same for everyone!). fir shouldn't need to justify himself (this time).

I don't think anybody was confused by what the question meant. What we were curious about was the reason for the thread to be created in the first place. If all the thread resulted in was people making a list of things they find difficult, it really wouldn't serve any more purpose than a thread asking people what their favourite ice-cream flavour is.

This. Just think, when you code (whether is actual coding or thinking up code designs) , what's most difficult to you? Seriously, not that complex and pretty interesting to know other's peoples ideas on what the difficult part of programming is (hint: it's not the same for everyone!). fir shouldn't need to justify himself (this time).

I don't think anybody was confused by what the question meant. What we were curious about was the reason for the thread to be created in the first place. If all the thread resulted in was people making a list of things they find difficult, it really wouldn't serve any more purpose than a thread asking people what their favourite ice-cream flavour is.

Since when was the Lounge the place for useful threads?

The "jer favourite ice-cream flavour" would be a perfectly okay Longue thread. At least much better than those "I need motivation and inspiration" BULLFUCK threads

Starting on something new ... it's much easier to keep refining the previous project.

yes, this is a big one.

with the old project, generally nearly all the infrastructure is already in place, but with a new project, one is often pretty much back with the bare language, or are using a different language with less familiar APIs (ex: Java, Dart, or Java via GWT, ..., vs me generally much preferring to use C).

likewise, with new design:

I have had much more success with designs which build on prior designs, than with things that are designed entirely new.

like, designs which already exist seem to often have a few advantages:

they are implementable, and generally free of "didn't take something into account, so it is unimplementable as-described or will otherwise be internally overly complex or inefficient" and with a smaller amount of "this feature seemed nice on paper but is nearly useless in practice";

often a lot of the details related to various issues will already be made (people will have fiddled with it, making sure it addresses various special cases, is relatively efficient, ...).

this is not necessarily to say much for "elegance" or "perceived simplicity", where often the more elegant and simple-looking the thing is, the more dragons that lurk in the implementation (hidden complexities and inefficiencies). often times "things which work well" end up very ugly in a design-aesthetics sense (and sometimes with features which seem blatantly counter-intuitive, ...).

this doesn't mean one can't write new code or create new designs, but does often give some favor to going the "embrace and extend" route with the design aspects, and relying more on iteration than on clean design.

Since when was the Lounge the place for useful threads?

It started in General Programming. I bounced it to the lounge when it seemed directionless.

Since when was the Lounge the place for useful threads?

It started in General Programming. I bounced it to the lounge when it seemed directionless.

Ah, Okay.

Getting started, i know i will be busy for a long time once i start.

Second i agree with the naming, staring at the screen with your fingers on the keyboard.

Since when was the Lounge the place for useful threads?

It started in General Programming. I bounced it to the lounge when it seemed directionless.

IMO you confuse "multidirection" with "directionless" - this is more '(possibly) multidirection' question but for sure is not directionless

to be honest i do not understand why some may have something against such multidirection topics - does they accept only one direction topics (i mean topics with supposed one and only exact answer) ? caould someone explain this?

This is just my perspective, I can't speak for anyone else, and I don't claim to be the objective holder of all truth.


Posting a discussion topic that consists entirely of "." is easy to perceive as being very rude. It gives the impression that you can't be bothered to explain what you want to discuss. It implies that you don't want to invest effort in the conversation, but just be showered with other people's contributions.

I'm not saying that these are true about you, I'm just telling you what kind of impression you are making on the community.


As a moderator, I have no problem with discussions that wander, branch out, and organically evolve as people talk. That's actually the point of a discussion forum. What I do have a problem with is topics that devolve into half spammy crap and half serious attempts at talking. When the signal-to-noise ratio drops too far, it's time to clean things up, and usually the best way to do that is to close a thread and let people restart the relevant conversation if it's that important to them.

In your opinion, the focus is the question you asked in the thread title. Let me explain why I think you're wrong.

A conversation is like a series of line segments. It may shift direction, even double back entirely, or whatever. But each section of conversation leads to the next, even if there is a difference in where the two connected line segments are going.

What you have done is drop a single point on the plane, and asked people to create a discussion. But you didn't provide a second point to create that first line segment. So anyone can come in and start creating line segments that start from your "focus point" but actually just shoot off in random directions.

Instead of a series of connected topics that organically progress over time, you just get a giant fuzz ball of people talking all over the place without actually saying anything to anyone.


That's why your definition of "multidirection" is in fact equivalent to my personal definition of "completely directionless." A topic without direction is useless, and we generally don't like that kind of thing here.

to be honest i do not understand why some may have something against such multidirection topics - does they accept only one direction topics (i mean topics with supposed one and only exact answer) ? caould someone explain this?

The problem with your original post is that it does not promote discussion. What happens when people ask questions the way you did is that everyone just answers the question without discussing the answers that previous posters have given. Go back and read through the thread and you'll see that the only real discussion between people is the talk about the thread itself. Nobody is discussing the actual topic (apart from a couple of people who simply agreed with someone else), because you never asked anyone to discuss anything.