Part of getting criticized is deciding whether you accept them or not. If you try to fight a criticizing troll, you probably won't win. It's easy to get drowned by criticism, so choose your battles wisely, just like Elon Musk, he quit a political action committee because he sees that the group was too cynical. And as experience teach us that too much cynicism tends to hoards negativity.
You can't impress developers
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Re: You can't impress developers
#72HN navel gazing aside -- I think this is really good advice. Rather than trying to impress your coworkers -- try to impress your users.
I think the challenge in many companies is getting enough access to your users that you can tell if they are impressed or not.
I'm going to try to think this way more.
Re: You can't impress developers
#73I've been active here for about 2 years now. I don't think there's been the dreadful decline people are talking about; I think it's mostly nostalgia talking. I know intellectually that I basically hated highschool and spent most of it alternatively depressed or bored out of my skull, yet somehow that period of my life has taken on a rosy tint. Sometimes OPs are wrong or misguided and somebody with more experience or…
I have similar thoughts. I've been here for a few years and I haven't observed any specific decline.
I'm a little confused by the perceived offense as well: it's not good to tell someone something sucks? I would much rather hear honest thoughts about my projects ("seems like a waste of time, poor implementation anyway, maybe try $x instead?") than be given a false sense of security through unwarranted praise. Of course what is not cool is downright snippy dismissals without any substantiation, but I think those are still relatively rare.
Really the most tragic thing about it all is that pointing out the "middlebrow dismissal" in a verbose comment/blogpost has become a meme unto itself. We spend so much time on meta-discussions now. So here's my idea of how to approach comments you guys feel are putting people down unfairly: neutralize the meanness by following up that very mean comment by saying something like "I don't think you're being fair, I think author of the post has made something really cool because $y". And, the $y part better be something technical, or else we're going further down into more non-substantive meta-discussion discussion.
Re: You can't impress developers
#74Appreciation and valuable feedback are two different things. What value does "this is great; let me buy you a pretty unicorn!" add to the discussion? Criticism and disagreement are central to growth. We are not here satisfy each others' egos or make each other feel loved; we're here to criticize software and make it better. Constructive criticism is our way of saying: "I have spent time reading your code, and here is…
I think it come down to the tone of any criticism. I don't mind honest criticism, or even opinion. One thing that always seems to bug me is a sense of arrogance around some people.
Re: You can't impress developers
#75The same holds true in virtually every content-oriented field: try making a room full of comedians laugh.
Re: You can't impress developers
#76I'm impressed by stuff all the time. I think there's just a fatigue about creating an emulator for or an implementation of X in javascript.
Re: You can't impress developers
#77Isn't that @holman's theme on your website? I don't recall him open sourcing it. (Unless it's the other way round, which I doubt.)
I pinged him. He stole it.
hey holman, you might want to look at the way your fonts are being rendered on linux http://i.imgur.com/wT1ue16.png
Re: You can't impress developers
#78Yes you can, if you are good.
I went to a mountain Bike trail competition, and watched the biggest masters in the world in this. Everybody there knew how to balance over the rear wheel(manuals), over the front(endos) and jump over a meter hight any obstacle, more than 3 meters with a ramp.
There it was a kid, 16 years old or so. He was not as good as the much older guys, but all of them were impressed about the guy. They knew that guy was good just looking at him.
If you want to impress devs you have to be better than them, and this is very hard on technical matters.
But you don't need to, because what makes a good product is not tech alone, but how this tech applies to human beings. Things like design or human interface, or understanding the market or people are also essential.
Quite often the tech experts are totally ignorant in those areas(no wireless, less space than a nomad.lame)
Re: You can't impress developers
#79Developers, in general, on average, chronically underestimate the time it takes to properly execute an idea and how many iterations and discovery of the exact needs of customers that requires.
I work at a company that sells a tool for model based testing and invariably, at every customer company, there are developers that think our tool isn't worth the money, because when we explain to them how it works and they think 'I could build that'. Yes, of course they could, just like they could also build a Reddit clone in a weekend. They just don't realize (and is hard to convince otherwise), just how much work it is and how much real world experience is necessary to make it actually useful. As the article says: developers are very hard customers and fortunately (for us, but not for the industry in general) the decision makers often distrust/discount the technical opinion developers have of tools they intend to purchase.
Tl;dr: developers too often say 'I can build that', when really, for practical purposes, they can't.
Re: You can't impress developers
#80Actually I'm impressed that all these 'look what I implemented in a Turing complete language' posts got so much attention for so long.