> I chose to expect the worst from your somewhat-ambiguous statement
Yeah, I noticed that too. Not that my feelings are hurt or anything, but you might end up in friendlier and more productive discussions if you try to stick to the HN guidelines, which includes:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> ...you might end up in friendlier and more productive discussions...
Was this discussion unfriendly?
As for discussion productivity: I know that -historically- I've spent TONS of time going round in circles because of unexamined incorrect assumptions that crop up when both sides "steelman" the others' arguments, rather than speaking plainly, clearly, and politely about what they believe their conversation partner to have said. "Steelmanning" can be an acceptable backup strategy, but -IME- speaking clearly and plainly is the strongly preferred strategy between conversational partners who can remain civil.
I assume folks can remain civil in the face of polite questioning and assertion, and switch strategies if it turns out that they can't. To do it in the reverse order is just much, much slower and error-prone.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says ... [a]ssume good faith.
Thing is, that was the strongest plausible interpretation of what you said. I assumed that you were making totally good-faith statements based on your background and structured my reply to be both polite and gather the most information reasonably possible about which of the totally plausible backgrounds you were speaking from with the fewest round trips. Had I not done this, and had you actually been one of those fools who revels in data destruction, we would likely have gone several rounds in mutual misunderstanding, rather than the half-round of solo confusion terminated by your reply that immediately cleared up the misunderstanding.
Anyway... if you have a couple of (6+) free months, you should TOTALLY clone Pivotal Tracker. IMO, the two HARD, HARD parts will be to replicate its ability to work offline, and its ability to integrate incoming changes from the server with unsaved changes on the client. Whoever wrote the data handling system for that program did a really, really, really good job.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Not that my feelings are hurt or anything, but you might end up in friendlier and more productive discussions if you try to stick to the HN guidelines, which includes:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html