The hard work of building a thing now isn’t writing the code
Last week, after seeing yet another person wax lyrical about Current (on this occasion without even using it!) I decided that I needed to do something about it.
Most RSS readers ask you to “mark as read.” Think about what that language implies. You’re granting the article a status change, like an administrator processing paperwork. Read. Filed. Handled.
Current asks you to release.
You can release from anywhere. In the river, a long swipe left on a card sends it flying off the screen. The remaining cards settle into the gap, the way water fills a space. One article, one gesture, gone.
Current, you see, while a fantastic idea, is only available for Apple devices. So I decided to create Stream which is Open Source, and cross-platform.
Terry Godier, the author of Current was gracious in his response, and subsequently wrote a blog post about it:
This morning someone posted a video showing a version of Current they had built with an LLM. My reaction wasn’t to be upset or threatened or defensive. I felt disappointed. I wish they had pushed further, or added something new. What they built lacked a lot of the character and philosophy of what I did and only approximated the look.
The hard work of building a thing now isn’t writing the code. But I don’t think it ever was.
[…]
I think it’s really great to be excited about building things. There’s an agency, a sovereignty you can feel when building and I’m over the moon that more people get to experience that.
But if I might: my advice to new builders is to trust that the bajillion dollar, bleeding edge system you’re using is capable of doing what’s already been done.
That means that you can take risks. You can ignore the prior art. You can push further and discover what your tastes are and how you might make better software, and differently shaped software. Use those new powers to build the future, not another piece of the past.
So I’m taking onboard that advice. Not only does Stream have a different approach (you need a backend to connect to) but also I’ve added accessibility features, pausing, and some other things that are useful to me – and might be useful to others
Source: Terry Godier
Image: Robert Zunikoff