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I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

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Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#41
post #29

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers. There are plenty of folks like Tom Christie, who has minimal social media following, but who built Django Rest Framework, which is used by tens of thousands of projects. The best developers are leaders, whether or not they're thought leaders.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Team players don't work alone.

What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects.

But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best:

> I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.

And then RMS was railroaded out of the free software movement he started by the social extroverts who replaced all the introverts in tech.

I'm an introvert. I'm a coder. I don't get paid to code. I do something else.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#42
post #29

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers. There are plenty of folks like Tom Christie, who has minimal social media following, but who built Django Rest Framework, which is used by tens of thousands of projects. The best developers are leaders, whether or not they're thought leaders.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Woz would have been nowhere without Jobs.

Jobs wouldn’t have succeeded when he came back without Schiller, Forstall, Cook, Fadell, etc.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#43

> They stream themselves coding at the same time each week without fail. Nope. Anybody who streams themselves coding is not a real coder. Coding is not rapid fire typing memorized boilerplate code to techno background music. Real life is not Mr Robot. When they do it at the same time each week that's the reddest of red flags that they're performing an act. It's all staged. As staged as professional wrestling is kayfa…

No. This is gatekeeping at it's finest. You can say that while they stream they are working on their social media presence more than the codebase, but streaming per-se doesn't stop them from being "real coders". Everyone codes however they want. What works for you might be different for someone else. And wanting to do it while interacting with an audience or streaming themselves creating something they already know h…

Yes. It's gatekeeping borne of jealousy. Keep introverted nerds in tech. Extroverted marketeers took our technology and perverted it into social media.

Woz said of his time building blue boxes purely motivated by intellectual curiosity:

> I was so pure. Now I realize others were not as pure, they were just trying to make money. But then I thought we were all pure.

Tech is so impure today it reeks. Bring back the hackers who build things for fun. Bring back the nerds who don't care to make money.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#44
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: >…

It your takeaway is that on the RMS debacle, then I find it rather sad. Without diminishing his achievements, the man is such a bad people person that he literally couldn't understand and respect other people's boundaries and sexually harassed several women.

No matter how good of an activist or a movement leader you are, if you can't stop yourself from being a huge creep, you should not hold a position of power and work with other people. Ever.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#45
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: >…

It's a bit sad that although coding tends to attract introverts, most SW development (especially in a work environment) fundamentally needs to be more social than other engineering disciplines.

If you can find a job where you, and only you, are writing code, and not integrating it into a larger piece of SW, then everything is fine and you can work alone. This is incredibly rare.

There is very little in SW that is clearly objective. How to architect the code well, rules about when to reuse code, when to abstract, whether to use a global variable, how to name things, even whether to use GOTO are all opinions - not facts. As such, the SW world has to put in a lot more effort in campaigning for what they consider good design and good coding practices.

Look at code reviews. This is, at its very core, a social practice. In my experience, most of the discussions in code reviews do not involve bugs (which are very objective), but are dominated by style and design discussions, which are subjective.

In most other engineering disciplines, things are a lot more clear cut. There usually are not 20 different ways to achieve something, and the criteria for quality is much clearer.

I too am an introvert. But I also realize that complex SW development is at odds with introversion. I can lament the situation, but I cannot blame extroverts for this. They didn't come in and crowd things. It is inherent to the beast. As a SW developer, I do need to influence my fellow developers (as well as my customers). I have to learn those skills. One can do that while still being an introvert.

(Not meaning to invalidate your point about RMS and organizations and social movements. I agree with you on that. But for SW development, some level of social skills legitimately gives you an advantage)

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#46

As Homer Simpson noted^, jealousy and envy mean different things. If you're jealous, you're worried someone will take something away from you, whereas an envious person just wants to get other people's success for themself. ^ https://youtu.be/Tmx1jpqv3RA

Where did this idea come from and why is it so often claimed? Never in my life have I heard someone use 'jealousy' in that context, yet it seems to be widely accepted fact on the internet.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: >…

It your takeaway is that on the RMS debacle, then I find it rather sad. Without diminishing his achievements, the man is such a bad people person that he literally couldn't understand and respect other people's boundaries and sexually harassed several women. No matter how good of an activist or a movement leader you are, if you can't stop yourself from being a huge creep, you should not hold a position of power and w…

RMS achieved precisely because he is a bad people person. He did what he believed needed to be done to reform the software industry the way he wanted it and he succeeded without regard for what other people thought of him. Unfortunately capitalists adapted to make tons of money exploiting the results of his life's work and social influencers influenced him out of society.

And don't worry about me. I prefer to work alone and I'm in the process of getting banned from your fine forum right now for expressing unpopular opinions.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#48
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: >…

Oh, please. Don't pretend to speak for introverts. I am an introvert. I love my alone time. I have no social media presence. I also thrive on collaboration, mentoring, and generally building software with other humans. It is fun, it creates business value, and it leads to better code as well. There are many people in tech like this. We're not extroverts (although extroverts are great, too) but we recognize software engineering is a social discipline of which sitting on your own coding forms only a part.

Yes, of course, you're entitled to be a misanthrope and do whatever you want on your own. Fine. But your picture of tech is warped. There is no conspiracy of extroverts; it's just that you don't like working with other people.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#49
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Woz would have been nowhere without Jobs. Jobs wouldn’t have succeeded when he came back without Schiller, Forstall, Cook, Fadell, etc.

Interesting perspective. I think the truth is they needed each other and the circumstances in which they excelled.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woz would have been nowhere without Jobs. Jobs wouldn’t have succeeded when he came back without Schiller, Forstall, Cook, Fadell, etc.

Interesting perspective. I think the truth is they needed each other and the circumstances in which they excelled.

Wozniak didn’t do anything significant after Apple. Not meant to be a judgmental, once you almost die it kind of changes your priorities and just by founding Apple he has done more in his life than most.

Jobs on the other hand, cofounded Apple, Next, and Pixar. The leaders at Next basically took over at Apple and the leaders at Pixar basically took over Disney’s animation division and ushered in a new era of animation.

Jobs of course didn’t do it by himself (my whole point). But he had some type of talent with finding the right people and getting them to do their best work. Was that the RDF? I don’t know.

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