u/rodyamirov

You can always start one, but I don't know if it's going to do well. It's easy to drop work requests, it's hard for people to want to do a lot of them. And editing is absolutely work (especially since people, particularly on the internet, often don't love negative feedback, and that's what this is almost exclusively going to be).

I can't say it's simply impossible to do well, but I've never seen an example of "emotionally charged miscommunication" or "someone refused to explain" leading to drama that was at all satisfying or desirable.

The canonical bad example, because I'm of the appropriate age, is in Shrek, when Shrek carefully mishears Fiona and thinks she's going to leave him (or reject him, or whatever, I don't remember; whatever he thought, she was saying the opposite) and storms off without confirming to her face. It's "justified" in that it's playing off his insecurity and general orneriness, but it was just so contrived and stupid.

But really you can find these examples all over the place, not just rom-coms (although that seems to attract this trope). I assume it's almost never done well because a decent writer wouldn't bother doing it _at all_; a sloppy writer just got to a point in the work and needed some drama, didn't have a good way to make that happen, and thus picked a bad way.

But it drives you insane! Just be a person! Yell at your partner if you have to, but don't just storm off.

This doesn't include _actual_ communications breakdowns (phone died, inconvenient kidnapping, whatever) which are _also_ often stupid, but more forgiveable. Sometimes people lose the game of phone tag IRL, too. It also doesn't include times when communicating actually _would_ create a problem (e.g. in Casablanca, Ilsa not explaining herself to Rick because her whole marriage was a secret, for good reasons). I don't love this either, but it can work.

In my experience, jumping a major version is not typically a problem. This is a problem with semver imo (there was another topic about this some time ago) but "we slightly changed the API of one function you may not even use" is technically a breaking change, so people bump major versions. But this looks the same as (say) a major nom release, which seems to be a complete overhaul every time. The former is 5 minutes of work; the latter is a serious change you need to budget some time for. But they're both "major version bumps."

In context, I have a lot of trouble believing the major releases to zip are causing any serious trouble for updaters. But I'm sure if you slip the maintainer enough cash he'll give you Pro Support and backport some fixes to the old majors.

This is not correct; you can still download and build it, but Cargo won't auto-resolve to these versions unless you pin specifically to a yanked version. It doesn't break anyone's builds, but anyone who could conceivably upgrade will do so.

This is not correct; you can still download and build it, but Cargo won't auto-resolve to these versions unless you pin specifically to a yanked version. It doesn't break anyone's builds, but anyone who could conceivably upgrade will do so.

This is not correct; you can still download and build it, but Cargo won't auto-resolve to these versions unless you pin specifically to a yanked version. It doesn't break anyone's builds, but anyone who could conceivably upgrade will do so.

This is not correct; you can still download and build it, but Cargo won't auto-resolve to these versions unless you pin specifically to a yanked version. It doesn't break anyone's builds, but anyone who could conceivably upgrade will do so.

I feel like we've been in that awkward phase for my entire career. Probably worse now, with everything, but nobody has ever wanted to be your first job.

Don't start with chronological order. Seriously. Figure out the absolute most interesting part of the story (I have no idea what that is from your perspective) and write that. Start in the middle of the action; don't give me a big genealogy or backstory at the start. End when the "story" has ended -- that is, when you figure out what the point of your story is and you've accomplished it -- not when you run out of outline.

Then you can write the sequel or prequel or side stories or whatever.

Respectfully, I don't know what advice you're hoping for here.

If you want to have a _polished_ book, you're going to need to polish it. It seems like you already know what the required work for that would be (basically; reread your book, note down everything that doesn't make sense or seems abandoned, figure out what you want to do about it, then go do that thing). Probably a lot of work.

If you just want the satisfaction of having finished a first draft, great! You did it! That is legitimately something that most people never do, and it's worth feeling proud of it and pleased that it's done. Then you can decide that's the end of it, maybe print it out and put it on a shelf somewhere and look at it from time and smile. That's not being condescending by the way, that's a serious proposal. You did a thing! That's great!

As to your feeling about worthlessness, I don't know. You should probably examine what you think gives something worth. That's also a serious proposal, by the way, and one that far too few people take. Would it be worthwhile if it was polished, but never published? Would it be worthwhile if it was published, but not a bestseller? Would it be worthwhile if it was a bestseller? Where is your sense of worth coming from? Serious question, think about it.

In practical terms, if you decide to finish the book beyond first-draft state, I may have some good news (which is also bad news). Matt Bell, in his excellent book "Refuse to be Done," which is ostensibly about editing but gets distracted at various points, describes the second draft process in a way that might be extremely interesting to you.

Basically, what you do is you finish the first draft, you put it in a box, then you wait six weeks. Do something else, read other things, watch TV, live your life, maybe even write something else for a while. Just get your mind off it.

Then open that box and read your draft. You will probably hate it; don't feel bad, we all hate our first drafts once they've sat for a while. That indicates you have taste.

Next, write an outline of the book that you've just read. Fill in the gaps however you like; basically, the idea is that, now that you've got this first draft which is, shall we say, primordial; you go back and write the book you _wish_ you had written.

The first draft is then completely thrown away, in one sense -- you don't edit it into the second draft, you start with an empty document -- but it's also very much still around. The metaphor is you use it as a "quarry." Hopefully it's full of all kinds of great ore -- cool characters, great plot beats, the odd profound metaphor, and so on -- and you can then mine that ore and turn it into something that's more like a book you'd actually want to read. Not to copy-paste it into your new draft (what would be the point?) but to be inspired by it and, on occasion, to type it more-or-less verbatim into the new draft, when some of that ore turns out not to need much work.

At the end, ideally, you have something that feels like much more like a book, but keeping the best of your original shot. After that, for the third+ drafts, you can go play with commas and whatnot.

Good luck!

Probably people don't want a whole book about the origins of somebody they don't know. Standard advice is to write one book at a time and try to make it good; and to do all the worldbuilding you want, but try and understand that 90% of it should not go into the book.

Serious question though, do you actually want to write a book? Or just make wacky outlines? No shame if it's the latter, seriously, a hobby is a hobby and you should do what you love. But if you want serious advice about writing a book, it's going to be "assume you're only going to get one book finished, if that; and try and make that one book be as good as possible." Which probably means -- and I admit I skimmed your outline, I have no idea who these people are and it doesn't seem important for the sake of your main question -- pick the most interesting part of whatever this is, and start right there. If you need to explain something, do so when you need it.

If you're extremely successful you can go back and write sequels and prequels, but really, that's for later.

Obviously the answer is "this is fine." If you would like special permission, here you go: I am a white person, and under that authority, I bestow upon you the magical White People Card which allows you to use our likeness in print and all other media, without restriction, in whatever situations you care to. This is legally binding! It will hold up in court!

More seriously, and just to disagree with the thread of people jumping on you, there _is_ a legitimacy backing your fear. Certain topics are very serious to people, and approaching them badly is going to go badly. Nobody has ever been eaten by a dragon, so nobody super cares if you write dragons badly; but racism is a complex topic which society wants to be Super Serious about right now. I don't want to lecture you about it, I can feel my own hackles getting up just thinking about broaching this online, this is a rat's nest I'm not interested in descending into.

But the key thing here is that if you're going to broach a topic that's important to people, and you want those people to like your [whatever this is], then you need to do it well. If you don't want to deal with that, just don't broach that topic (or brace yourself for having Those People all over you).

All that being said, your setting has magic. You can come up with a big backstory for it if you want, but you can also just put POCs in magical pre-modern not-England and just declare this is a world without racism. It's your story: it doesn't have to be realistic except in the parts you care about being realistic about. Like, it has magic. Maybe it changed some people's skin color. You don't even have to explain it, there's just all colors of people at not-Hogwarts and nobody bats an eye about it because it's all totally normal to them. Or whatever.

I haven't read his whole anthology (the man has a back catalogue to fill a warehouse), but he recently published a short story in the New Yorker from the perspectives of a retired woman and a Jewish man (depending on how you look at it). He's neither, and if the Social Justice Police were planning to come after him, I suspect they would have found him from their headquarters at the New Yorker.

It's weird because (and I say this as someone who didn't actually like ASOIAF that much) I considered Tyrion and Dany the "main characters" and got annoyed when the book shifted away from them. (even though they dragged at times)

The concern works either way though; when you have too many plotlines, the reader gets invested in some more than others, and the "others" feel like interruptions.

It's really not clear to me that this is a problem worth solving. Nearly every use of `Collection<T>` in Java that I have ever seen was a problem; yes, they offer a `.contains` function, for example, but what is its performance? If it's a HashSet, I feel good calling that in a loop; if it's a List, I need to find another way to get what I want. `Collection` is, for any purpose I've ever needed it for, a failed abstraction in Java (not least because all the "immutable" collections "implement" Collection by throwing runtime errors on methods they don't support! Ridiculous!).

Love to see it.

Side note, I know in my head that git is complicated but in my heart ... my interactions with it are so simple. Surely one could just port the important parts in a weekend and move on. I know you can't; I have no idea if this is a sign that git is well-designed, because it hides such great complexity in such a simple user interaction; or if means git is terrible, a rats' nest of niche features, each used by few, that have accreted over time and which reflect a lack of design and driving principle.

The 2021 edition is a trigger for many; for some reason, many coding agents default to this, despite 2024 having been the default for new projects for two years now. So either you're running a very old toolchain, I guess, or (and this is the implication you're responding to) it was all vibe-coded.

And however else you feel about vibe-coding, nobody wants to _read_ vibe-coded code, and since this is a coding subreddit, and people want to see code ... you get it.

Additionally, many people feel an existential threat from AI, probably because the people who are making and promoting AI are saying it is an existential threat (to the programming industry, or to society at large, or whatever) and because our actual lived experience with it has been that it obliterates what we once loved about our profession.

Assuming good faith, if you're just a nice guy who wrote a blog and stepped in all this, there is your explanation. If you're a bot -- and I have no way to know! which is part of why this is all so frustrating! -- then I wasted my time talking to no one. Again.

"Success is TBD" -- they published it, but hasn't yet been successful, due to the difficulties of marketing.

Typically, by having another job.

"Hobby" is a dirty word -- it's the thing you do to relax, it's something you're passionate about, maybe, but not something ultimately important (or at least not most-important) to you. So it doesn't need to be a hobby. But unless you are very good and very, very lucky, it's not going to be enough to pay your bills. Especially if you want to do something crazy like own a home or have a family.

But, we're all writers here, and writers imagine things. I want you to imagine a world where the most important thing in your life _isn't_ how you get your money. Many parents, for a common example, will say their children are more important than their jobs. This despite the fact that children cost money, rather than generate it. Many people say the same about their religions, which, again, are usually a cashflow-negative part of their lives.

So imagine a life for yourself, if you want to, where writing is important to you, writing is something you do, but you also have a job. A classic example is teaching -- so many writers seem to also be teachers -- but it's not the only possibility. Half the contractors I know seem to be working on some kind of novel. I'm a programmer and writing on the side, and I love it; there are definitely months where it's more important to me than my day job, even though my day job is what feeds me and my family.

Just think about it. College trains you to think your job is your identity -- hell, most of society does. But it doesn't have to be, and it shouldn't be.

> I learned he named and inspired his characters based on people he knows in real life, that’s a very cool idea, but i just don’t know how to make it translate in an american setting

Do you not know people in real life?

I mean, I see it, but I've never seen an AI project that had so few comments ... on mine, they typically outnumber the code.

Around 1500 is where I start calling it a good day.

But I delete a lot, most of those don't get kept. I find it very helpful to get into the flow, so to speak, and discover how things feel. But sometimes it goes in unhelpful directions and it's like, cool, I learned a little about how that character feels and reacts in certain situations, but it's not going in the book.

I think by some definitions of the word, yes? In the sense that they completely control a particular niche "market." But since there's no more interesting question here other than the title, I prefer to assume you're using reddit as a dictionary (lazy, but sort of amusing), rather than vagueposting to see if you can pick a fight (irritating and common).

I find that I'm nearly as fast with the first draft in rust than I am in Java (my first language). At this point I'm faster in rust than in python, because rust can tell me what the field names are and so on.

Then there's the maintenance phase, which is usually more important (but sometimes time to market really does matter); I find rust code easier to maintain than the others _typically_. The only exception is when (e.g.) Python really does have the library you need, and you need to hand-roll it in rust; then it's easier to check over 500 lines of duck-typed python than 10,000 lines of rust code-and-a-library.

So it's case dependent.

Also, if you're talking about work, you have to talk about agents. I find that Claude writes rust faster and more reliably than those other two languages, especially once the basic idioms are established; I think this is because of the ease of cargo check, nextest, clippy, and so on; so it's very easy for the bot to do basic sanity checks on its work, whereas in python it needs to be very paranoid about getting the field names right and (perhaps? I'm speculating here) has less brain-space left over to think about the hard stuff.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own problems onto it, though, who knows. But Claude writes rust very well, it's certainly no detriment.

I think transaction fees alone with bitcoin make it quite expensive (really: out of reach) for any kind of small business usage, unless you're somehow trading some proxy for actual bitcoins, at which point you could just use the currency of a country with a working financial system (I assume by "some countries" you mean "countries whose fiat currency has fallen apart"), which is what most such countries have been doing for generations, but without all the rigamarole.

As for the comparison with banks, no; you're comparing an imaginary ideal state of bitcoin with an imaginary bad state of banks. In practice transferring money between two banks accounts is safer and more reliable than doing it with bitcoin (and wildly, wildly cheaper).