I feel like github is not the right place to put a blog, reading any text there that is longer than single line gets me eyestrain.
I agree, and I've seen more "blogs" on GitHub lately. it's very annoying.
Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
171–180 of 334 posts
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#172> "First off," I reply, "No. And second off, This is a super condescending thing to say. Let's say you're a lawyer telling a client why you can't do something. The language you're using is pretty harsh. > Maybe I just need to have a little more empathy (or is it sympathy?) for normal people. You are also a "normal person" I don't understand why developers sometimes think they are gods or something. > Can you help wit…
> I've been saying this for a while, but the pay we provide to developers was a mistake. It has created a class of people that think they are gods. I think you've got it backwards there. I agree with everything else you said, and hopefully the author was being tongue in cheek, but this is silly. Developers have a specialized skill and get paid specialized wages. The behavior you're describing is not limited to develo…
> The behavior you're describing is not limited to developers..any profession that has a specialized set of skills and a specialized language that only the "in" people understand has the same issues.
You can use specialized language without having the attitude of a condescending prick.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find a version of this even with fresh out of college programmers. I've noticed something with boot camp programmers too. Something that may have changed is that newer graduates may have studied programming because "it pays well", and not because they were computer hobbyists before deciding what to study. I've been on meetings with some programmers that didn't know how to use a gui ftp client or how to manually u…
> newer graduates may have studied programming because "it pays well", Define new. Programming has been known to pay well since at least the 1990s.
I went to college for a big chunk of the 90s, liked to fiddle with computers and didn’t know programming paid well.
In fact I didn’t know much at all about computer science other than some prerequisite class I was bored out of my mind in.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#174Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…
> just pick up Excel Pandas are free; Excel is not.
Excel is installed on my work computer. How do you install pandas and will IT let me install it?
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm, most professional programmers probably don't know how to operate in a linux dev environment bro... That is also an extremely stupid requirement. You can be a good programmer (Especially as a junior) without knowing all the linux command line tools.
I haven't met a good professional programmer working in webdev who didn't know their way around linux. I've met plenty of bad programers who got into this field for money, didn't know how their way around unix, were barely able to do fizz buzz and would be better doing something else. I haven't hired them though. Not knowing one's way around linux is a sign of lack of curiosity and passion for the topic. It's obvious…
I was under the impression all the cool kids used MacBooks these days.
And electron, don’t forget about electron.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#176> "First off," I reply, "No. And second off, This is a super condescending thing to say. Let's say you're a lawyer telling a client why you can't do something. The language you're using is pretty harsh. > Maybe I just need to have a little more empathy (or is it sympathy?) for normal people. You are also a "normal person" I don't understand why developers sometimes think they are gods or something. > Can you help wit…
> Let's say you're a lawyer telling a client why you can't do something. The language you're using is pretty harsh.
Except we aren't talking about a client relationship, we are talking about someone asking you to do something for free because "you do something with computers" without making the effort to understand literally the first thing about what you actually do.
> the pay we provide to developers was a mistake. It has created a class of people that think they are gods.
Painting an entire diverse group of people with a single brush, that's real polite of you.
> Come down from your soap box, learn real empathy, decide you are a Normal Person yourself and get rid of your condescending attitude.
Perhaps take your own advice?
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#177Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…
> just pick up Excel Pandas are free; Excel is not.
Excel Online and Google Sheets are free.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#178The problem is mainly one of discoverability. The non-programmer in the examples says "simple" when they mean "discoverable". The programmer says "simple" when they mean "not much code complexity". Of course you disagree. All the examples - installing and using a package manager, running a command line program - are "simple" from a software point of view, but they're not at all "discoverable". To understand the steps…
> I'm frequently stumped by man pages, and end up having to hunt down an example of how to use a particular command line application on Stack Overflow. If you're not aware of tldr [0], I highly recommend it. [0] https://tldr.sh/
ss64.com is good to me as well. There's like 4 ways to write filters in powershell and I am never sure which syntax I need for a given command or if I'm supposed to use |?{ instead.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#179The problem is mainly one of discoverability. The non-programmer in the examples says "simple" when they mean "discoverable". The programmer says "simple" when they mean "not much code complexity". Of course you disagree. All the examples - installing and using a package manager, running a command line program - are "simple" from a software point of view, but they're not at all "discoverable". To understand the steps…
> I'm frequently stumped by man pages, and end up having to hunt down an example of how to use a particular command line application on Stack Overflow. If you're not aware of tldr [0], I highly recommend it. [0] https://tldr.sh/
man(1) pages on linux are almost all terrible. Unworthy of inclusion in any manual. Proper manuals have examples of use. Many linux man pages don't even discuss (or list, even!) return codes or failure modes.
Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers
#180Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…
Indeed. I'm a programmer, and if i have a 30 by 30 table of numbers with colon headers coming produced by an app or a script, my first reaction is to select, copy, paste it in excel, press search in excel and type 'text to columns'. Next step is search for 'chart'. In between I can experiment with just a few mouse clicks with different chart types, draw a trend line, add a caption,...
Of course when this needs automation, further steps need to be taking using a script in combination with pandas or the like, but only after a quick assessment using excel.