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Hermit Programmers Are Dead

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Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#51

Post by vbezhenar »

iso1210 wrote: post #35
watt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do the pipes come from, though? And it's not just "a" pipe and "b" pipe you are connecting. It's not a "pipe" at all. It's complicated components that can have complicated interactions.

One guy in Nebraska. There's about 4 people that really understand how ffmpeg works, and thousands of people that write stuff that runs on the top.

Do you think that it's sacred knowledge? Or just nobody cared enough to understand how ffmpeg works, because those guys are doing good work already?

Also I don't really think that it's fair to claim something for everyone in the world. There are plenty of developers, forking some project and working silently upon it inside some big corporation. I'm sure that there's some chinese guy chuckling on your words as he writes some assembly optimization for H.264 for some rare architecture.

It's just that one guy in Nebraska situation is kind of local optimum and everyone is more or less OK with that, at least for the time being.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#52

Post by vbezhenar »

totololo wrote: post #12
swiley wrote: post #3

They've been saying this since the 80s. The magical world where prolog/pascal/java/NPM solves all your problems is eternally 3 years away.

Yeah, it's not directly the point of the article but I thought if we can't automate truck driving, programmers are safe for a while.

Who said we can't automate truck driving? Of course we can. It's the balance of safety/cost that prevents to fire all truck drivers right now.

In programming it's different. Cost of mistake is negligible for most projects. Worst case is your production database is dropped, so you have some downtime while restoring it from the back up.

If some AI will be able to actually replace even junior developer, it'll be widely adopted. May be not for martian missions or artificial heart, but for some boring CRUD service - any day.

An issue is that so far GitHub Copilot is the only widely known AI attempt to tackle code generation. And while it's promising, it's far from replacing a human. It just can't write useful programs. While automated truck driving is absolutely a thing for many years.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#53

Post by pdimitar »

So he conflates "hermit" with "unsociable solo star with no communication skills", i.e. "the bad programmer", apparently.

Should be obvious that being a hermit does not correlate with being professionally unsociable, nor does being an amazing programmer does correlate to being sociable. They are separate things and even if there's some overlap that says nothing about the one thing or the other.

Fairly pointless article, feels like it was written mostly so the guy can advertise himself.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#54

Post by pdimitar »

dagw wrote: post #39
qazpot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "Bad Programmer" is more apt instead of "Hermit programmer" and yeah it is a no brainer that they are "dead"

Maybe "Bad Programmer" is more apt Some of the very best programmers I've ever met tick all those boxes. They could deliver in a week something other teams would struggle with for months. The problem of course came when other people would try to understand and build on what they had done. If you believe the quote that "Real Developers ship" then they where absolutely Real Developers.

I suppose it depends how we define "good" and "bad". To me "good" means "produce working code that can be easily picked up by others".

Because of that I suppose I don't fall into this mythical group of programmers that can crank out something in a week that teams struggle with for months. I've done it several times but it's not how I usually roll, plus teams can be super slow sometimes so single guy beating them isn't a huge achievement. I've gotten a lot of accolades because I've "left the garden better for the next guy", several times.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#55

Post by pdimitar »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51
iso1210 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One guy in Nebraska. There's about 4 people that really understand how ffmpeg works, and thousands of people that write stuff that runs on the top.

Do you think that it's sacred knowledge? Or just nobody cared enough to understand how ffmpeg works, because those guys are doing good work already? Also I don't really think that it's fair to claim something for everyone in the world. There are plenty of developers, forking some project and working silently upon it inside some big corporation. I'm sure that there's some chinese guy chuckling on your words as he writ…

Your comment is absolutely spot on, I've known people forking GCC internally and beating stock GCC with 7% to 10% on an obscure architecture -- and legal prohibited them to share the patch upstream.

I've seen such things several times in my career and it made me very skeptical of people generalizing, like your parent poster kind of did.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#56

Post by pdimitar »

antonvs wrote: post #49

I find it hard to understand why anyone would read past the first few paragraphs of this obvious dreck. Y'all are much more charitable than I.

I barely lasted 3 paragraphs before I said to myself: "oh, this guy imagines himself as a revolutionary who will break down the monopoly of the tyrannous programmers, I see, nothing interesting then".

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#57

Post by vborovikov »

dagw wrote: post #39
qazpot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "Bad Programmer" is more apt instead of "Hermit programmer" and yeah it is a no brainer that they are "dead"

Maybe "Bad Programmer" is more apt Some of the very best programmers I've ever met tick all those boxes. They could deliver in a week something other teams would struggle with for months. The problem of course came when other people would try to understand and build on what they had done. If you believe the quote that "Real Developers ship" then they where absolutely Real Developers.

The programmer's job is to produce code that works and is ready to change. So these real developers did only a half of the job.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#59

Post by petercooper »

This article focuses on 'hermit' programmers as employees, but I think ultimately that type of stereotyped character is now as likely to become a small business owner.

With all of the benefits of efficiency and the cloud mentioned in the article, such lonesome characters can now put together their own SaaS or similar sorts of high margin services/products (such as infoproducts, data, or semi-automated consultancy) and make a reasonable income, and most customers don't care whether it's wired together with tests, refactored properly, or what not.

It does require at least enough business, marketing, and communication skills to sell their work, however, but even this is becoming an easily reproduced or outsourced skill nowadays.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#60

Post by JediPig »

petercooper wrote: post #59

This article focuses on 'hermit' programmers as employees, but I think ultimately that type of stereotyped character is now as likely to become a small business owner. With all of the benefits of efficiency and the cloud mentioned in the article, such lonesome characters can now put together their own SaaS or similar sorts of high margin services/products (such as infoproducts, data, or semi-automated consultancy) an…

what you said is true. i may start taking contracts again. i work alone, only thing i promise is it works as agreed on, and near zero quality issues. i have systems in place for decaded that have produced one or two bugs. how?

i actually print out the sourCe code and go line by line while on the toilet. though i now use an ipad to do that.

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