Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

mat-mcloughlin.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 67 posts

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#31

Post by 10098 »

aaron695 wrote: post #22

Person A just works job. Job is paid by other person B(a creator) Person A dies, person B just hires a replacement. World is the same. Person B dies, company/idea dies, world loses something. I think hackers want to be the person B and make their mark. It doesn't have to be bogging, running a charity for free part time also counts but it has to be something. People have this strange idea working a job is contributing…

> Person B dies, company/idea dies, world loses something.

Well, actually, world loses nothing. It doesn't care. Humans care, maybe, but you only think they matter because you are one.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#32

Post by mildtrepidation »

aaron695 wrote: post #22

Person A just works job. Job is paid by other person B(a creator) Person A dies, person B just hires a replacement. World is the same. Person B dies, company/idea dies, world loses something. I think hackers want to be the person B and make their mark. It doesn't have to be bogging, running a charity for free part time also counts but it has to be something. People have this strange idea working a job is contributing…

Person A decides to do his own thing and becomes a "creator." Person B fails to replace him and his business fails. Oops.

Sorry, but this is crap. Without people who "just break even," in your estimation, the only people involved in any venture would be the founders, and as soon as someone got good enough to do their own thing, they would. If doing the work a founder can't do -- the tasks outside of his field, the work when the company gets too big for a person or two to wear every hat at the same time, etc. -- nothing gets done.

People who work for pay make possible the things "creators" want to do but can't by ourselves. If that's not contributing, I don't know what is.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#33

Post by fat0wl »

i just started using stack overflow recently & i've found it's mainly a bunch of people asking very simple questions or fixes to very nuanced quirks.

When faced with similar situations, i've always followed my own judgement through research. I can see how this kind of a resource is useful in certain cases, but a ton of the site is just silly gamification.

Time spent on these sites is time that I could have spent watching a video lecture about Scala, or trying a new library.

I guess github is better in this respect since it's about active coding and understanding distributed projects. But I see a ton of forked repos in users' projects with few (if any) of their own code in them. It makes me realize that many cutting edge devs are just filling out the "digital resume" of a programmer. Yet there are obviously some who are driving the industry mixed into the same sources.

signal to noise is difficult to determine in all systems and being current can be a bad indicator in programming. There are tons of badass devs who just learn design patterns and language nuances for "older" languages who can write much more modular/reusable code than those who learn MVC framework after MVC framework. I think..... a lot of them work for Netflix.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#34

Post by ben0x539 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #2

This is the first I've heard the term "dark matter developer", but this type of developer definitely exists. There's probably equal numbers of those who are happy with their jobs as aren't, and who are brilliant as are mediocre. I imagine that the typical dark matter developer is more risk-averse than an "outgoing" developer (intentionally not using the term "regular" because outgoing developers are a vocal minority…

The obvious term is "baryonic" developers, but somehow I don't think that will catch on.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#35

Post by jheriko »

mildtrepidation wrote: post #30
jheriko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really? maybe there is an over generalisation there, but i think that people who do their jobs for money often have little motivation, or even reason, to try to improve their skill at work. what they will generally improve at is finding psychological tricks to ease the passage of time, ways to hide a lack of productivity or monopolise the work that they find the most comfortable... practically speaking they get more…

"9 to 5" refers to a salaried position, i.e. regular W-2 work. I'm not totally clear on your connotation, but I don't think it's common. This seems really presumptuous to me, though. Many people just don't consider anything but regular work like this as an option, as they just haven't been exposed to other things; this doesn't say anything about how much or little they love their work or wish to excel at it. Some peo…

/assuming everyone who isn't an entrepreneur/

i've used the term poorly if you think this - that is clear.

i'm not even thinking of entrepeneurs. i don't consider myself working '9 to 5' even if those are coincidentally my hours... the amount of time i work is much more to do with my desire to fulfil my tasks and deliver.

i've used the term wrongly, but i think of the '9 to 5' mentality as the eagerness to pack up and go home at 5, but yet not wanting to leave early so that you don't get docked minutes in your pay packet.

my point was more to differentiate between those there for survival or routine, compared to those there from desire.

i've met plenty of entrepreneurs who have no passion for what they do and are either terrible or lucky at it... some doing it out of misguided expectation from family or peers. its got nothing to do with that.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#36

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

greenyoda wrote: post #16

" Just because somebody has a blog or a twitter account it doesn’t make them a good developer or expert. It just means they shout louder. " Exactly. 99.9% of developers' blogs aren't worth reading. They're full of articles like "I just wrote my first Go program, and here's what you should know about it!" Please, if I wanted to learn about Go, why would I read something that was written by someone who just admitted he…

Sounds elitist. The only crime the author would have committed there is choosing a linkbaity title for their post, because something like that could cover any amount of interesting topics.

"Understanding Go and Coroutines as a PHP developer" for example might be useful, and it wouldn't suffer from being written by someone who hadn't absorbed the living spirit of Rob Pike before they wrote it.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#37

Post by Arnor »

greenyoda wrote: post #16

" Just because somebody has a blog or a twitter account it doesn’t make them a good developer or expert. It just means they shout louder. " Exactly. 99.9% of developers' blogs aren't worth reading. They're full of articles like "I just wrote my first Go program, and here's what you should know about it!" Please, if I wanted to learn about Go, why would I read something that was written by someone who just admitted he…

Cool, someone _does_ read my blog :)

I've been feeling like a bad developer because I never write. Then when I try to write, I think wonder why anyone would read what I'm writing (because it's about my first Go program) and I give up. Even when I come up with something relatively novel, I usually just get the info out via StackOverflow.

The point: those useless dev blogs with posts that don't matter to anyone are there because many devs (i.e. me) without much to share, feel obligated to write.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#38

Post by pionar »

ars_technician wrote: post #11

>They may still know the latest design patterns, tools and techniques just as well as you do. They just choose not to talk about it. I don't think this was the original "Dark Matter Developer" definition. If you read the original article ( http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen9... ), you will see that he specifically says they don't keep up to date. They just do what they know, go home at the en…

Not true. I'm a "dark matter" developer. I don't blog, I only use Twitter to keep up on sports, I only use Facebook to keep up with far away friends and family. I post something programming-related on Facebook about once a year.

However, I know (and know that most of my fellow dark matter peeps know) the latest and greatest out there. We discuss it, take a look at it, and usually come to the conclusion of "been there, done that, not mature enough for our system that handles billions of dollars in transactions annually".

Also, one thing that's bothered me recently with developers is the focus on greenfield development. I've done both green- and brownfield, and find brownfield to be tons more stimulating than greenfield development. I know that a lot of my fellow dark matter folks do too. Constraints are more thought-provoking than "I can do anything".

That's why you don't see us caring about some new javascript framework or RoR or Azure, or any other "new" (and usually unproven) technology. We're too busy kicking ass and finding beauty in mature, established languages and frameworks that actually have all the features (and then some) of "newer" technologies.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#39

Post by rfnslyr »

Arnor wrote: post #37
greenyoda wrote: post #16

" Just because somebody has a blog or a twitter account it doesn’t make them a good developer or expert. It just means they shout louder. " Exactly. 99.9% of developers' blogs aren't worth reading. They're full of articles like "I just wrote my first Go program, and here's what you should know about it!" Please, if I wanted to learn about Go, why would I read something that was written by someone who just admitted he…

Cool, someone _does_ read my blog :) I've been feeling like a bad developer because I never write. Then when I try to write, I think wonder why anyone would read what I'm writing (because it's about my first Go program) and I give up. Even when I come up with something relatively novel, I usually just get the info out via StackOverflow. The point: those useless dev blogs with posts that don't matter to anyone are the…

Keep a notebook handy and whenever you have thoughts worth writing, write them. Expand on them later. Write drafts, expand on those, iterate, rewrite. Once you feel you have a concrete idea or article down, publish it.

A lot of these developer blogs read like spur of the moment publishing. Unorganized, baseless rambling.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#40

Post by Nursie »

10098 wrote: post #31
aaron695 wrote: post #22

Person A just works job. Job is paid by other person B(a creator) Person A dies, person B just hires a replacement. World is the same. Person B dies, company/idea dies, world loses something. I think hackers want to be the person B and make their mark. It doesn't have to be bogging, running a charity for free part time also counts but it has to be something. People have this strange idea working a job is contributing…

> Person B dies, company/idea dies, world loses something. Well, actually, world loses nothing. It doesn't care. Humans care, maybe, but you only think they matter because you are one.

Bleak, nihilistic and true.

Would upvote again :)

Post reply on HN