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The silent majority in software

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: The silent majority in software

#141

Post by orwin »

gettingitdone wrote: post #65

I am probably part of the silent majority, at least until this comment. Be aware that my comment is focused on business. What you do as a hobby or a side project is out of scope. The debate around languages often focus on syntax differences, as if they alone would make a huge difference. We need to consider the eco system as a whole. Many have probably read the "blub paradox". The context of that article is his exper…

I disagree only on your last paragraph. It heavily depends on what the startup is selling and it's customers.

I would only take Java for a B2B onprem app. For anything else, I'd go with other languages.

Re: The silent majority in software

#142

Post by omega3 »

swyx wrote: post #9

also known as the "one percent rule" - 90% of people passively view content, 9% comment on content, 1% create (i've written on it here and how it does favor creators https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd#why-does-this-work-on-them )

I'd go further than this and say out of that 1% who create content further 99% shouldn't.

Re: The silent majority in software

#143

Post by jongjong »

nvarsj wrote: post #124
donatj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am regularly up at night in a cold sweat worrying about how if I suddenly needed to find a new job I’d have to learn some sort of front end JavaScript framework.

Honestly that's why I swapped from front-end at the beginning of my career. Back end and infra moves much slower, jobs tend to be more secure and specialized, and pay seems higher overall. Learning Java back in the 00s was one of my best career moves.

I agree. Also, back end tends to have fewer mega-trends. You usually have the option to stick to your old tools. There are still plenty of C/C++ back end jobs for example. The community keeps branching off.

On the front end, the trends tend to be more extreme; people will not take you seriously unless you give up on whatever tools you use and go straight for React or VueJS... Then when TypeScript comes along, everyone has to switch to that... I couldn't believe it when people started combining JSX with TypeScript... It's essentially a double-transpiled language now... The trends keep adding more complexity and everyone is forced to switch to that regardless.

Re: The silent majority in software

#144

Post by benhurmarcel »

t_mann wrote: post #119
danwee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many developers (over 35 years old) in Europe doing the same (they earn above the average european salary, so like 140K EUR/year or so): Java, no HN, no Linkedin, no FAANG, no leetcode, no switching jobs every 2 years. They have families, they are normal people. If you ask them about monads, they would have no idea (like me) what are you talking about. That's the path I'm heading to (hopefully).

140k EUR for a dev role? Normally I'd say you're delusional, but since you say you actually know people who consider that normal, may I ask which country(ies) you're talking about (since it's apparently not Switzerland or Norway, where I might have believed it)? I still have a strong suspicion that either your friends gave you wildly inflated numbers, or you happen to know some serious outliers. Check this out for a…

It might be a contractor's invoice. So in most countries that would compare to an employee's salary around half of that probably.

Re: The silent majority in software

#145

Post by lytefm »

swyx wrote: post #9

also known as the "one percent rule" - 90% of people passively view content, 9% comment on content, 1% create (i've written on it here and how it does favor creators https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd#why-does-this-work-on-them )

I'd suppose that on a personal level and for HN, activity also changes with experience.

I've been passively reading HN for a few years as a junior dev after my team lead introduced the site to my before even creating an account.

I've been making comments on a few topics of interest now and then in the past three years.

Since a few months I feel like "yeah, I should probably write some docs + blog posts" which might be interesting to other HN readers.

I've also noticed that some HN users write a lot of comments to any kind of post whereas others mainly commment on articles related to their are of expertise.

Re: The silent majority in software

#146

Post by jongjong »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #99
jongjong wrote: post #52

I used to be part of the silent majority of software developers but that changed after I became disillusioned about the direction of the industry. Nowadays, I'm basically forced to use certain inefficient tools in order to get a job because a bunch of highly vocal junior devs who got their way. It's a bit like in politics; when times are good for the majority, most normal people aren't interested in politics; they ha…

Yeah. This is happening, look around job board. A lot of job description look really dumb, tech stack doesn't make sense for their business at all.

It's so frustrating to find a nice job advert, then you read through the (very specific) list of requirements and you're thinking to yourself "JavaScript: Check, Node.js: Check, Postgres: Check, Docker: Check, REST: Check, WebSockets: Check, Redis: Check, RabbitMQ: Check, Distributed systems: Check, nginx: Check, Kubernetes: Check, GraphQL: DAMN IT! This was almost a match..."

Re: The silent majority in software

#147

Post by goodpoint »

kaba0 wrote: post #133
goodpoint wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Many popular and needlessly complex tools, especially around devops... used only because they are popular. Even worse, people don't even bother to look at other options even if it's just to learn from them. Compare the new hip thing with a different one and people get defensive.

Strangely enough I feel that we tell ourselves again and again that this problem is not as hard, the previous iteration of programs trying to solve it were just written by incompetent people. It can be made so much easier - the program gets built but in the process the developers realize that it has plenty of edge cases not solved by this easier version and the same complexity gets bolted on later. The fact is, there…

> written by incompetent people

Which is funny because most modern devops tools are written by organizations with no experience maintaining critical systems or large scale.

Re: The silent majority in software

#148

Post by oblak »

beebeepka wrote: post #69
coldtea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature. Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was esca…

I've never been into history, so my perception of the guy was "formed" almost entirely by Futurama. So, in reality I don't know anything about Nixon except I do not want him to get Cambodian on my ass

> It is estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 people were killed during the bombing of Cambodia between 1970 and 1973.[152]

I guess Wikipedia is all wrong again, huh

Re: The silent majority in software

#149

Post by tempodox »

lordnacho wrote: post #122
rl3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. I mean, he did give us the EPA. What the ulterior motive was, I'm unsure.

But you triple checked it, that's the point. Default evil.

But Nixon said himself [1,2] that “I’m not a crook”! Who would ever doubt the word of a politician?

[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-insists-th...

[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/richard-nixon-im-crook...

Re: The silent majority in software

#150

Post by gettingitdone »

donatj wrote: post #59

> Sometimes I’ve seen Pull Requests from empty accounts with a brief explanation of what was implemented. They just submit bug fixes, no drama. Over half my coworkers including some very talented developers have no public repos. As someone with almost 200 that always blows my mind. How do you work in software for years and not find some little hole you want to fill. That’s not a judgment call, that’s an honest questi…

> How do you work in software for years and not find some little hole you want to fill

That's not the right conclusion to make. There are lots of developers who code in their spare time, but don't make their code public on Github.

I have had several side projects, but I am not inclined to share my code on Github. Either because I intend to make money off them, or because I don't have time to manage an open source project. Part of it is also caused by "imposter syndrome", where I don't have time to make the code good enough for public view.

You have over 200 public repos, which means you have a different view. But that doesn't mean that your coworkers don't do things on their spare time.

To be honest, I feel this attitude is beginning to spread to potential employers. Now we are expected to publish and be rated on our public repos, and it will just lead to lots of burned out developers in a few years that feel pressured to publish OSS and practice leetcode.

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