Craft software that makes people feel something
by lukeio on 12/11/2025, 1:45:08 PM
https://rapha.land/craft-software-that-makes-people-feel-something/
Comments
by: mmooss
> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream<p>This is how many artists have worked. They make something for themself, and one day they show it to someone else ... or they just get the urge to share it more widely, often without the hope that anyone will really be interested. Or they keep it for themself.<p>I think Tolkien is in that group, for example. But don't get the wrong idea from an extreme outlier: much of the time, others aren't interested, or not many are. Sometimes, nobody is interested until after you've forgotten about it or passed away. Who cares? That's one reason you need to make it for yourself. Also, I think that otherwise it provides much less expression and insight into another person, which is at the core of art. There is a fundamental human need to 'externalize the imagination'.
12/11/2025, 6:28:04 PM
by: pedrozieg
There’s something refreshing about explicitly saying “this editor exists to delight me, and that’s enough”. The default script now is that every side project should either be open-sourced or turned into a SaaS, even if that pressure is exactly what kills the weirdness that made it interesting in the first place.<p>Some of the best tools I’ve used felt like they started as someone’s private playground that only later got hardened into “serious” software. Letting yourself park Boo, go build a language, and come back when it’s fun again is probably how we get more Rio/Boo-style experiments instead of yet another VS Code skin with a growth deck attached.
12/11/2025, 4:16:39 PM
by: Minor49er
> When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit.<p>Unless you're working on something with a lot of breadth, of course. A great example is yt-dlp which works on a huge number of sites. The wow-factor is high because it feels like it just works everywhere. That's only possible through a huge number of data parsers, many of which are not terribly different from one another
12/11/2025, 3:51:44 PM
by: devinprater
Emacs and Emacspeak make me feel something. A lot of something. This kind of "playground" feeling where I can dive into a manual that's just sitting right there. The the entire Emacs is a manual. C-h m and boom, all keyboard commands for that mode are right, feaking, there. No hidden bullcrap, no patchwork HTML tables to drudge through, nothing. And if something doesn't work with Emacspeak, I can Codex it into working. Maybe. Enough to get what I want done, done.
12/11/2025, 6:23:29 PM
by: ozim
Yeah I make software that makes people feel something - rage - there are 2 types of software one that no one cares about and software that people use and voice their opinions about :)
12/11/2025, 5:29:37 PM
by: jesse__
> created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it [...] mainstream<p>This is a habit I picked up from two people I respect greatly as programmers; Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow.<p>Those guys both built their own little lands; Jon went as far as building a new language, a 3D game engine in that language, and has multiple game titles in-flight in the engine.<p>I have a handful of projects that are similar in spirit. I'm largely the only, and target, user of these projects. It's <i>joyful</i> to work in an environment you control completely. No deadlines, no feature requests, no support tickets, no garbage collector, no language runtime .. just me and the OS having a party.
12/11/2025, 6:04:29 PM
by: socalgal2
Lots of software is crafted to make me feel rage
12/11/2025, 8:37:28 PM
by: PTOB
In so far as it makes me feel the relief, awe, and pleasure of picking up a good tool, then by all means.<p>The mouse trail made me feel something else.
12/11/2025, 3:16:12 PM
by: jamesgill
I agree with the title, but disagree with this:<p><i>"When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software."</i><p>The purpose of software for other people is not to make them go 'wow'; it's to help them with their <i>jobs to be done</i>. That's it. The software is always in service to the job the user wants to get done. Can that make them go 'wow'? Sure, but you can't..aim for 'wow'. That's the wrong goal.<p>As far as 'inspiration' goes, I'm with Stephen King: "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."<p>For those that might disagree (hey, it's HN), I would ask: how do you know when 'wow' occurs? Here's a clue: 'wow' can only happen when something <i>else</i> occurs first. That 'something else' is described above.
12/11/2025, 6:34:50 PM
by: hellorashid
case in point: the lil mouse-snakey-animation-thing on your homepage is <i>excessively</i> satisfying and making me feel lots of things
12/11/2025, 10:03:48 PM
by: amelius
I don't know what the article was about because I got distracted, but the mouse animation looks great!
12/11/2025, 3:36:04 PM
by: brailsafe
This is what my nostalgia for native macos editors rests on. I've wanted to buy Coda despite VSCode and other derivatives being more productive, and where would editors now be without BBEdit, Textmate, Espresso/CSS Edit, which all did particular things very well, given the constraints at the time.
12/11/2025, 8:06:16 PM
by: trashface
I've done this, but the product I made is prohibited by the terms of service of the application it works with, and that industry is litigious and authoritarian. So I'm never going to release it, or even talk about it.
12/11/2025, 6:20:17 PM
by: ChrisMarshallNY
I love that essay.<p>I tend to do things the same way. I write software that <i>I</i> want to use.<p>I do tend to go "all the way," though. Making it ship-Quality, releasing it on the App Store, providing supporting Web documentation, etc.<p>Makes me feel good to do it.<p>I always used to say "My dream is to work for free."<p>Livin' the dream...
12/11/2025, 5:37:33 PM
by: nchmy
JIRA makes people feel something
12/11/2025, 9:25:07 PM
by: css_apologist
i remember making the switch from atom to vscode felt so cold<p>i can’t explain what, it wasn’t just the colour scheme<p>atom was objectively worse on performance and a few other things i forget, but it felt so good to use
12/11/2025, 6:26:17 PM
by: bodhi_mind
I’m stuck on the opening sentence. Family went to sleep in the morning so rest of the day is free? I must be missing something but that doesn’t make sense.<p>Did the author chloroform them?
12/11/2025, 6:11:33 PM
by: PaulHoule
Love how the mouse trail effect is using O(1) memory no matter how fast you move the mouse so it won't blow up your browser.
12/11/2025, 2:02:58 PM
by: deadbabe
Dread is a feeling.
12/11/2025, 3:15:06 PM
by: tarkin2
Making people something for software rather than helping them interact healthily with real people in their surroundings feels irresponsible at this point in time, given all the damage social media, short form videos, and the rest have done to the world at large.
12/11/2025, 6:28:42 PM
by: aeblyve
I find that the software that evinces a feeling of admiration in me is itself as devoid of feeling as possible, RE the observation that aesthetics are created out of pure functionality.<p>The more "sentimental" or "egotistical" a piece of software is in itself, the less I like it. Taken to the limit, the title of the article commands us to generate Skinner boxes to maximize user engagement etc.
12/11/2025, 4:11:57 PM
by: crumpled
Looks like they disabled the mouse effect thing everyone is talking about, for the articles. So if you want to see it, go to the homepage of the site.
12/11/2025, 3:55:06 PM
by: barrenko
Craft software that makes <i>you</i> feel something.
12/11/2025, 6:43:03 PM
by: militanz
Very interesting, I learnt Rust for the same reason: having fun doing something that I need and learning new things in the process.<p>Good luck for your new project!
12/11/2025, 5:18:50 PM
by: beanjuiceII
rage after moving my mouse on that site...great work !
12/11/2025, 2:14:18 PM
by: dzink
That was the thought when I designed <a href="https://dianazink.com" rel="nofollow">https://dianazink.com</a>
12/11/2025, 5:11:02 PM
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12/11/2025, 5:10:07 PM
by: runtimepanic
The Zelda example is a good reminder that emotion in software often comes from consistency and responsiveness. Those games feel immersive because the underlying systems behave predictably, inputs map cleanly to actions, and the world reacts without friction. That same principle applies to non-game software too: tight feedback loops and coherent internal rules make tools feel “alive” in a way users notice even if they can’t articulate it.
12/11/2025, 7:38:43 PM
by: ghjv
habitually move my cursor while reading things... so Feels Bad for sure
12/11/2025, 3:36:58 PM
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12/11/2025, 7:59:22 PM
by: ranger_danger
Love the mouse cursor, it made me feel happy.
12/11/2025, 3:21:57 PM
by: flemins
Does anger count?
12/11/2025, 7:42:40 PM
by: ZebusJesus
Boo is an interesting name for an editor what feature were you looking to make that others didn't have? I like your website by the way, the blue square that turns the mouse cursor into a tracer is a neat effect and makes interacting with your content fun!
12/11/2025, 5:42:17 PM
by: smm11
Circus Ponies Notebook.<p>That was a look into a world we steered away from.
12/11/2025, 5:34:24 PM
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12/11/2025, 5:33:53 PM
by: imiric
> I don’t really feel I need to follow people’s cake recipe for success.<p>That's great, but then what's the point of this article?<p>The author is seemingly offering advice about why and how software should be built, but then claims to not follow anyone else's advice. Cool.<p>Just do whatever makes you happy. If you want to work on proprietary editors and programming languages, go ahead. I would argue that doing that in the open would both improve the projects and make the world a better place, far more than blogging about them does, but this doesn't matter if you're optimizing for personal happiness.
12/11/2025, 5:25:40 PM
by: torginus
The title sounds like the Chinese curse of software development.<p>Fun tidbit: Just to make sure I got it right, I quickly googled the phrase. Gemini's elaboration on the topic truly made me feel something. Gemini's answer:<p><i>A "Chinese curse" often refers to the phrase "May you live in interesting times," though it's not actually Chinese but a misinterpreted English saying, while actual Chinese curses involve direct insults like "Cào nǐ mā" (Fuck your mother(sic!))</i>
12/11/2025, 3:29:56 PM
by: swader999
I think with tools like Claude code you can more easily tackle niche areas that would benefit from custom crafted features and then using the app would feel like it was purpose built for the specific task at hand. Sure the code might not look hand crafted, but if it works and solves problems in the world...
12/11/2025, 4:42:27 PM
by: Xenoamorphous
Kinda tangential but in the advent of AI I feel like there won’t be a niche for “handcrafted software”.<p>When quartz watches came up the makers of mechanical watches struggled. Quartz watches are cheaper, more accurate in many cases and servicing is usually restricted to replacing a battery. However some people appreciate a good mechanical watch (and the status symbol aspect of course) and nowadays the mechanical watch market is flourishing. Something similar happened with artificial fabrics (polyester, acrylic) and cheap made clothes, there’s a market for handmade clothes that use natural fabrics.<p>Nobody (well, barring a few HN readers) will ever care if the software was written by people or a bot, as long as it works.
12/11/2025, 4:23:08 PM