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Hermit Programmers Are Dead

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Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#111

Post by pjerem »

IlliOnato wrote: post #85
dagw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would not call such a programmer "best", or even "good". Maintainability is almost as important as code actually performing its task.

For you and for me, sure. For management ? They delivered. And as they delivered, they are the number one choice for bootstraping this brand new important project they'll not have to maintain...

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#112

Post by hunterb123 »

vborovikov wrote: post #57
dagw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does work and is ready to change, the other people just aren't good enough to know how.

They'll have to bring the base down to their level to understand and iterate on it.

If you brought another "hermit" in, he'd obsess over it and either refactor it in his vision or understand it and know how to flex it to continue iterating.

You bring a team of normal people in, they'll think it's too "adhoc", and rewrite it in a bloated and complex way.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#113

Post by biddit »

ehnto wrote: post #105
bstar777 wrote: post #69

This is such a strange thing to choose to write a derogatory article about. If you are a singular developer that is only writing code to satisfy your needs, then you can do whatever the hell you want. If you have to work in a collaborative environment, then you will likely need to play by the rules of that environment. There's not much else to say about it. The stuff about automation doesn't even seem to fit in this…

From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce. I've always worked at agencies so I get exposure to a great deal of projects, and I do partly see what they are saying. More and more parts of orgs are becoming intertwined with software, and they're becoming better at software, requiring y…

Good lord I think you just helped me understand why I have come to hate this line of work (web development) 20 years in.

I see now that much of my ability to accomplish a task/feature/project is now out of my control - I'm now so highly dependent on 3rd parties and spend the day sorting out stuff to glue together rather than actual creative work.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#115

Post by bstar777 »

speeddemon wrote: post #104
bstar777 wrote: post #69

This is such a strange thing to choose to write a derogatory article about. If you are a singular developer that is only writing code to satisfy your needs, then you can do whatever the hell you want. If you have to work in a collaborative environment, then you will likely need to play by the rules of that environment. There's not much else to say about it. The stuff about automation doesn't even seem to fit in this…

I'm guessing the article refers to a form of "cowboy coding" or similar things promoted along with the myth of the 10x programmer, where there are attempts to apply that practice (of siloing developers and having them only write code to satisfy their needs) into the organizational environment. And I'd agree with the article there, in my experience that's awful and leads to everyone being upset. The hermit programmer…

It all depends on what your perspective is. This article seems to speak to web devs, and I agree with their premise for the most part. But it doesn't work for single indie game developers. Hermit programming is very effective in that space (insert Stardew Valley reference here).

So I come back to... why bother even writing this? It's no secret that poor "team players" are a nightmare to work with.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#116

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

> This was possible in part because the number of available technologies (software + hardware devices) was so limited that, for instance, a C programmer could literally code for any available platform;

Uhhhh…WTF?? On a scale of 0 to WRONG this is WRONG + 1.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#117

Post by sleepybrett »

ehnto wrote: post #105
bstar777 wrote: post #69

This is such a strange thing to choose to write a derogatory article about. If you are a singular developer that is only writing code to satisfy your needs, then you can do whatever the hell you want. If you have to work in a collaborative environment, then you will likely need to play by the rules of that environment. There's not much else to say about it. The stuff about automation doesn't even seem to fit in this…

From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce. I've always worked at agencies so I get exposure to a great deal of projects, and I do partly see what they are saying. More and more parts of orgs are becoming intertwined with software, and they're becoming better at software, requiring y…

> From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce.

Tell that to millions of small-medium businesses, if their needs can't be met by squarespace (and anything other than a brochure really can't) They reach out in their network for what could be looked at as a 'computer/internet handyman'. Will they get the highest quality solution? Maybe not... but they also don't have the budget for that.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#119

Post by mikewarot »

IlliOnato wrote: post #91
mikewarot wrote: post #29

In the old days, a server was fast enough to do everything, you bought it, installed the parts, and ran it for years, sometimes more than a decade, before being turned off. You didn't need to configure infrastructure, because you had already built it, once, and it just worked. It was a much simpler way of doing things because the number of users was known, and you didn't need to scale past that. Also, your users were…

> Programming was a matter of finding the right libraries, and doing plumbing, back then, as it is now. It seems by "programming" you mean setting up a website or a webapp. You know, maybe this is what most of the programmers do, but the whole programming area is much, much more vast. Very little of what I have been doing in 25 years of software development, or what my colleagues are doing, could be described this wa…

Sorry, but this triggered me getting defensive... here's the rant.

By programming, I mean starting from a sketch on a piece of paper at lunch at Wendy's outlining an idea, and implementing it on both a handheld computer programmed in PL/N, connecting to it via a weird custom serial card/cable, then in Turbo Pascal on an IBM compatible PC, implementing a database, text editing routines, multitasking, and all end user support... in the days of MS-DOS through Windows 3.1

Building my own multi-tasking definitely wasn't plumbing, but after I had the libraries built I needed, it was all plumbing.

The nice thing is in Turbo Pascal, everything had help that was complete, with a working example piece of code.

GIT still is way better than backups to zip file on floppies.

Re: Hermit Programmers Are Dead

#120

Post by p0nce »

ehnto wrote: post #105
bstar777 wrote: post #69

This is such a strange thing to choose to write a derogatory article about. If you are a singular developer that is only writing code to satisfy your needs, then you can do whatever the hell you want. If you have to work in a collaborative environment, then you will likely need to play by the rules of that environment. There's not much else to say about it. The stuff about automation doesn't even seem to fit in this…

From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce. I've always worked at agencies so I get exposure to a great deal of projects, and I do partly see what they are saying. More and more parts of orgs are becoming intertwined with software, and they're becoming better at software, requiring y…

Climate is getting warmer so we need humans that can stand higher temperatures.
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