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How to DOS a developer

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Re: How to DOS a developer

#11

Post by stcredzero »

arkitaip wrote: post #7
goodside wrote: post #3

"Be verbose. As verbose you can be. If you can say something in one sentence or three paragraphs (with three overlapping or identical examples), choose the latter. Searching for signal in lots of noise is a favourite pasttime of many developers." Pot, kettle, black, etc.

I think he was making an example.

At one shop I worked at, the devs just started filtering the output of one tester to the trash. Not that she didn't have something useful to say. It just wasn't worth dealing with the other 99 posts that were noise.

Re: How to DOS a developer

#12

Post by mduerksen »

sambeau wrote: post #8

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and…

> Devs are generally bad communicators

That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true.

Besides, I don't think the author claims that "users are stupid", but that they often don't take the time and diligence to make their case as clear as possible, because they lack awareness that the open-source devs are doing them a favor.

Apart from that, I do fear that writing this article probably won't help solving the problem.

Re: How to DOS a developer

#13

Post by __david__ »

sambeau wrote: post #8

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and…

I don't think this article assumes "users are stupid"--I understood it more as "many users are bad communicators". I also don't think developers necessarily have an unrealistic assumption about the technical understanding of their users. That doesn't mean that it doesn't get frustrating sometimes.

Your mechanic example isn't convincing to me (I don't remember ever feeling belittled talking to a mechanic or dry-cleaner). Trying to debug a problem that someone else is having with your code is more like a mechanic trying to fix a car solely by talking to the owner on the phone while the owner, who doesn't know the ins and outs of car maintenance, has the hood open and is holding the only wrench he owns.

Re: How to DOS a developer

#14

Post by mahmud »

kgtm wrote: post #6

"How to Disk Operating System a developer?" Oh come on. It's DoS. Pretty please? Not respecting capitalization is definitely a way to DoS a developer...

Yeah, if you're gonna right a smug article about your profession, at least get the lingo write.

Re: How to DOS a developer

#16

Post by Supermighty »

sambeau wrote: post #8

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and…

Generally speaking users are stupid. But they are absolute experts in knowing what they like and don't like, and what they will and won't pay for.

Re: How to DOS a developer

#17

Post by gilgad13 »

sambeau wrote: post #8

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and…

There was a whole section related to bad coding practices, so I don't think this article was as simple as "Devs awesome; users suck".

Re: How to DOS a developer

#18

Post by kgtm »

mahmud wrote: post #14
kgtm wrote: post #6

"How to Disk Operating System a developer?" Oh come on. It's DoS. Pretty please? Not respecting capitalization is definitely a way to DoS a developer...

Yeah, if you're gonna right a smug article about your profession, at least get the lingo write.

I see what you did there...

Re: How to DOS a developer

#20

Post by wingo »

sambeau wrote: post #8

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and…

That is not the point, and Hutterer never said "devs are clever", much less "users are stupid". Those are your words. Read the article again.

I found it amusing, as it has been happening to me lately.

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