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Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

mat-mcloughlin.net

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Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#51

Post by Sanddancer »

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 works on their passion in the allotted time. Person A also has a life outside the terminal in which they hike, they play Magic the Gathering, they tinker a bit with robotics. Not everyone's playing the same game as you, stop denigrating those that have more diverse interests than all code, all the time.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#52

Post by greenyoda »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #36
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.

If preferring to learn a subject from someone who knows it well (and has spent days or weeks rather than minutes editing their prose) makes me an elitist, then fine, I'm an elitist.

Your hypothetical article about Go and coroutines could be very useful, provided that the author has had some significant experience with both Go and PHP (e.g, they've written and maintained non-trivial programs in both languages). Otherwise, it's likely to be full of misconceptions and even errors.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#53

Post by vellum »

kstenerud wrote: post #45

As a dark matter developer, I'll tell you why I'm not more public: I don't have enough time to maintain a decent blog. I could maintain a shitty one, but what's the point of that? Join a community? I barely have enough time for HN as it is! Stack Overflow? I contribute sometimes, but once again, it comes down to time. If you have the time, I applaud your contributions. As for me, I'll settle for answering maybe one q…

Stack Overflow? I contribute sometimes, but once again, it comes down to time. If you have the time, I applaud your contributions. As for me, I'll settle for answering maybe one question a month.

According to this paper, 95% of the users on Stack Overflow are "low activity" users, but they provide 50% of the answers.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#54

Post by mikeash »

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…

That's really weird. Feeling like a bad developer because you never write would be like feeling like a bad racecar driver because you never bike. Totally different activities.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#57

Post by rietta »

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…

That has been my impression too. Dark matter developers are people who work in software development in the employ of a company. Their employer may - and usually does - have a blog and a twitter and may well have dedicated marketing and sales teams. So even though these developers may not personally market, their employment depends upon these non-dev activities.

For me, personally, blogging and going to conferences is pure marketing. It works too. It results in me and the guys who work with me to have an income, thankfully. It's about demand creation for our services. Many people who are awesome computer scientists and programmers are not looking for that lifestyle. They work for good companies that pay them well to code. They do not have to worry about the non-coding tasks that need to happen for there to be that coder job.

Sometimes I envy their situation, but I am now personally addicted to self-employment, business, and startups. I love coding and do it for my livelihood, but I do not feel that I am called to work as just a programmer for a company.

I do like the analogy still. It's like the dark matter halo that presumably encircles our galaxy. It's unseen but is vitally important for all of our existence.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#58

Post by saraid216 »

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…

Instead of blogging, I use things like Google Plus. It's not shocking for me to post something silly and inconsequential and completely egocentric like "My First Go Program", but it's also public and discoverable on the off chance I do something flabbergastingly amazitastic without the overhead of an entire blogging platform.

(And no, before you go looking, I don't identify primarily as a programmer, so my G+ is not full of random code snippets.)

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#59

Post by lightblade »

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…

I would argue that those that blogs demonstrates their written communication skill, whether it's good or bad is another matter. But I would definitely more likely to hire people that can demonstrate this over those that are unknown.

Re: Dark Matter Developers != Bad Developers

#60

Post by bthornbury »

This whole article is written from the perspective that dark matter developers are by nature worse than the alternative, with the exceptional one amongst them.

"They can be just as capable as you."

It has been my experience that those with the loudest voices are rarely the best at what they do. Far more often it's the people who prefer to spend that time experimenting or learning from others who are the best.

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