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You can't impress developers

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Re: You can't impress developers

#91

Post by thedanfilter »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #88
akkartik wrote: post #8

You can't impress developers on HN . There's something about the social dynamics of large groups of developers online that causes relatively-uninteresting criticisms to dominate. But when somebody's actually trying something out, rather than just kibitzing? They're a lot friendlier. If you couldn't impress developers we'd never switch to new technologies. And yet here we are, with rack and sinatra and cucumber and no…

I'm not sure that the "new technologies" you listed are very good examples. Rack, for instance, isn't really that much different from CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, NSAPI, ISAPI, Apache modules, and so forth. It's just one more way of invoking custom code to handle an HTTP request. This is something we've been doing for many years now, and it really isn't "new". The same goes for Sinatra. I remember seeing Perl and Tcl code in…

Congratulations to PommeDeTerre for providing the perfect example of the sort of comments that are so condescending. I hope that he/she meant it in jest.

Re: You can't impress developers

#92

Post by sltkr »

spicavigo wrote: post #52
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #17

I become impressed when I see utility. Anyone can mock up a poorly featured demo. Programmers tend to be a lot more receptive when someone says: We created X, and here's the successful, maintainable, real world product we used to implement it called Y than: We created X, here's a 10 line incomplete demo that isn't really useful for anything and that we didn't explain well

Of course, expecting HNers to be intelligent enough so that the obvious utilities don't need to be spelled out will be wrong. If you don't spoon feed us, we will talk trash.

So basically everyone that doesn't see the "obvious" utility of every pet project is an idiot?

And you are saying HNers are the ones with negative attitudes?

Re: You can't impress developers

#93

Post by jere »

Confusion wrote: post #79

Developers, 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 thin…

>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'.

Neat, what is the company? I was glancing at some papers on model based testing recently and had no idea there were commercial tools for it.

Re: You can't impress developers

#94

Post by yesimahuman »

Confusion wrote: post #79

Developers, 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 thin…

I think this also extends into developers that want to be founders. I think they have a hard time selling things because they always built instead of bought and feel lots of things should be free. They also think particular details matter when they really don't, and these things hold them back from selling.

As a developer founder, getting over this has been one of the most challenging but important steps in making my business grow and thrive. I'm still not 100% there yet.

Re: You can't impress developers

#95

Post by thedanfilter »

serge2k wrote: post #27
bambax wrote: post #14

I had missed the first link about a Python interpreter in JS. I too find it incredible and very exciting. I'm not sure I want to manipulate the DOM in Python instead of JS/jQuery, but it could prove super cool to write web workers in Python for instance. The more you can compute in the browser the better. The client is where CPU cycles go to die, we need to change that.

I don't think it is unimpressive, but I do wonder why? It's impressive from a technical standpoint, and that is in some ways enough. But why the need to port everything to javascript? I don't use python for things I would write in javascript and unless you are prepared to port all the libraries (i.e. the thing that makes python so useful/fun/awesome) then why? I can just use JS. JS is a language with good enough feat…

Unless I am mistaken it would allow a person to create a web-based editor that can compile and run the python code on the same web page. This seems to be very much the direction that online programming tutorials are taking.

For schools, Universities, etc, it means not having to worry about platform or installed software.

As most open source projects stall due to "more important things to do", it would probably be wise to offer these people as much encouragement as we can to better the chances that someone will complete one (and want to support it in the future).

Re: You can't impress developers

#96

Post by PommeDeTerre »

thedanfilter wrote: post #91
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the "new technologies" you listed are very good examples. Rack, for instance, isn't really that much different from CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, NSAPI, ISAPI, Apache modules, and so forth. It's just one more way of invoking custom code to handle an HTTP request. This is something we've been doing for many years now, and it really isn't "new". The same goes for Sinatra. I remember seeing Perl and Tcl code in…

Congratulations to PommeDeTerre for providing the perfect example of the sort of comments that are so condescending. I hope that he/she meant it in jest.

No, I'm completely serious.

Can you explain how my last comment was "condescending"?

It's not "condescending" to express an idea that differs from that of somebody else.

It's not "condescending" to disagree with a claim made by somebody else.

It's not "condescending" to give examples why a claim somebody else made may not be true.

The commenter I replied to suggested that certain technologies were "new". I disagreed, and provided reasons why I don't consider them new, based on other technologies that I, and very likely others here, have used in the past.

If you wish to discuss those technologies and their novelty, I'd welcome such discussion. If you disagree with my claims, that's fine.

I'm just not certain how you accusing me of being "condescending", without even giving any evidence to back up this claim, is productive.

Re: You can't impress developers

#97

Post by ap22213 »

I think the OP misses the fact that of a few hundreds people who may view and read an article, only a few will put forth effort to comment on it. So, there's definitely some sampling bias. And, typically people put forth effort only if they have motivating opinions, one way or the other. Adding the fact that comments like 'awesome post!' tend to create a lot of noise and get down-voted quickly, it's not surprising that many comments may seem negative. It's the unfortunate nature of online forums. Oftentimes a few negative pieces of feedback will hide substantial amounts of muted support.

Re: You can't impress developers

#98

Post by HarryRotha »

yesimahuman wrote: post #94
Confusion wrote: post #79

Developers, 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 thin…

I think this also extends into developers that want to be founders. I think they have a hard time selling things because they always built instead of bought and feel lots of things should be free. They also think particular details matter when they really don't, and these things hold them back from selling. As a developer founder, getting over this has been one of the most challenging but important steps in making my…

This is so true. I am 3 months in to a 2 week project.

Re: You can't impress developers

#99

Post by doktrin »

seabee wrote: post #48
kevinflo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this as well and I've always felt it had to do with the fact that you cannot downvote comments. Comments systems that allow for only upvoting seem to skew towards surfacing loud comments versus reasonable comments. The silent reasonable majority (that is less inclined to comment or even vote) needs a way to help curate when things get unbalanced. Think about how you might not end up actually clicking upv…

But you can downvote comments, if you have sufficient karma. So is the problem that the people with the power don't exercise it, or that people don't upvote the reasonable comments in a sufficient ratio to push the bad comments down? Meta-HN is not my favourite topic but perhaps it's time we had a review to account for how the community has changed since the last one.

> So is the problem that the people with the power don't exercise it, or that people don't upvote the reasonable comments in a sufficient ratio to push the bad comments down?

So, I can't speak for everyone but it's fairly rare that I down-vote a post that appears to have been written in good faith (even so-called "middlebrow dismissals").

I would imagine (or, indeed hope) that most users with the ability to down-vote are fairly conservative with it. It's important to keep flame bait and trolling comments off of HN, but I'm less sure where to draw the line WRT comments whose content I find uninteresting.

Re: You can't impress developers

#100

Post by corresation »

jacques_chester wrote: post #39

I'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…

This impending-collapse of Hacker News thing has been a recurring theme for most of the existence of the site (while this account is only half-a-year old, I've had various accounts on here since the very early days).

The only recent trend that has diminished this site is actually this very submission, and the related self-righteous comments that appear in virtually every story now (one single fresh account drops a negative comment and the whole discussion gets sidetracked into how disappointed someone is in the community, so now everyone has to stay inside for recess. It is incredible how many "why all the negativity" comments appear in discussions with little to no actual negativity).

Meta is the curse of all communities, and HN is currently mired in a lot of meta.

The longer form version of this - http://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2013/06/02/hacker-news-isnt...

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