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You can't impress developers

baus.net

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Re: You can't impress developers

#121

Post by henningb »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #85
clicks wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cour…

Having been in the industry for some time now, I've observed significant generational differences between how criticism is given and accepted. When I worked with developers raised in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, they generally wouldn't hold back when it came to criticism. If something was done wrong, or if something was a stupid idea, they'd say so very bluntly and to-the-point. They'd also be more open to receiving…

I would argue criticism is communicated differently across generations, not being less accepted.

There is a difference between a) "I don't like $x about your idea." b) "I like $y about your idea. I think you could make it even better if you do $x differently. For example like this: ..."

In my experience, older generations tend to do a) more, while younger ones do (and expect) b) more. Not a bad development IMO.

Re: You can't impress developers

#122

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: You can't impress developers

#123

Post by kaoD »

jacques_chester wrote: post #82
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…

Humans are notoriously optimistic, and in particular, we forget about all the things we have to do in order to achieve the things we want to do. (I have been reading some research on this lately). I used to harbour the "build it in a weekend" suspicion about everything, and then I started building things. The world is a damn mess, is what it is.

Could you please point to the research? It sounds interesting.

Re: You can't impress developers

#124

Post by demachina »

davewiner wrote: post #53

Hacker News is going through a predictable evolution. In the early days it's a wonderful community of supportive collaborators. These are the people who start unmoderated mail lists and discussion groups, at least the ones that grow to the next stage. It attracts people who want to be part of an unmoderated mail list or discussion group. It doesn't matter what the topic is, they always show up. They feel a sense of e…

Yet when there was a thread on here about your product, Fargo, last week you seemed to be quite fond of Hacker News, asking people on your blog to vote it up so you could get more publicity.

If you don't like Hacker News why don't you stop reading it, posting to it and pointing to it in your blog multiple times a week, glowingly when its in your favor and harshly when its not.

You seem to being continuing your long running tendency to eviscerate anyone or anything which criticizes you and make out like its "their" fault and not yours.

You are also reinforcing the perception among many that you want attention, even when it entails hacking people off to get it, like you are doing here.

Re: You can't impress developers

#125

Post by jamesjyu »

> So don't try.

Stop! Don't tell people not to try. There's always going to be the vocal peanut gallery at HN (and anywhere online) that will do whatever they can to disparage projects.

But, this doesn't make up the majority of people reading. There are millions of developers, hackers, designers, builders reading and benefiting from the projects, code, and products that people post. These are the people who get inspired or utilize the projects and blog posts about that cool new thing you made in node.js, or the neat hack you did with Ruby and realtime sockets, or that awesome new CSS technique.

The minute we stop showing the things we make, the trolls win.

So I say: TRY! Keep trying! Keep pushing out things that you made. Ignore the trolls and focus on the constructive feedback.

HN is a beautiful thing, and it had a huge hand in pushing me to start a startup. And, yes, it was a developer product. If I didn't try, it wouldn't have existed.

Re: You can't impress developers

#126

Post by handelaar »

davewiner wrote: post #55
cmbaus wrote: post #3

This conversation reminds of the old programmer joke: How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five. One to screw in the light bulb and four to say, "I could have done that."

What's so impressive about screwing in a lightbulb. I don't get it.

That's a bit too subtle for this place these days, colleague

Re: You can't impress developers

#127

Post by dmiladinov »

HarryRotha wrote: post #98
yesimahuman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All that's left when you're done with the first 90% of development is the other 90%[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

Re: You can't impress developers

#128

Post by wslh »

I can quickly enumerate a list of things that impressed me from other developers. If others in the HN can do the same would be a better answer to this article.

- http://bellard.org/jslinux/ - Google: impressed from the engineering and scale side. - Demo scene - Exploiting difficult security vulnerabilities

Re: You can't impress developers

#129

Post by andrewflnr »

flipcoder wrote: post #69
philjackson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think Reddit's /r/programming shows that a potential downvote for everyone doesn't do anything to bring about reason. It used to be a vibrant, smart, collaborative community. Now you need the skin of a Rhino to post there.

I agree. Reddit has changed for the worse. It seems like HN is changing as well. If only there was a way of keeping out those types of people.

There's always charging for membership.

Re: You can't impress developers

#130

Post by xtrumanx »

mratzloff wrote: post #117
xtrumanx wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you PommeDeTerre. It's hard for me to take this meme of "HN is full of negativity" seriously when I constantly see people (like thedanfilter above) complain about comments whose only faults are that they aren't full of glowing praise.

This is a quintessential "middlebrow dismissal", taking an uninteresting point, dismissing it with trivial technicalities, and pretending it added anything to the conversation. The conversation then gets sidetracked to debate semantics or pedantic details. I've started down-voting these types of posts.

Presumably you are referring to PommeDeTerre's comment as "middlebrow dismissal" and I don't believe his intent was to sidetrack the debate with semantic and pedantic details.

His comment is a new branch in the comment tree. If you find this branch uninteresting you're free to not follow it. Sometimes some really interesting conversations appear a few branches deep in the comment trees that are completely off-topic.

I know where you're coming from and I've seen people use that "middlebrow dismissal" tactic you've described when passionately debating. I totally don't think that was PommeDeTerre's intent. It looked to me that he just believed that the examples akkartik were bad enough to warrant pointing out. He didn't attempt to tie that into completely dismissing akkartik whole comment.

And for the record, I don't agree with PommeDeTerre's comment at all because I think he missed the point akkatrik was making when he listed his examples.

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