Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#81

Post by rowanG077 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

davesmith1983 wrote: post #79

rowanG077 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider it python code if it is a cookie cutter website where the creator didn't have to write a single line of python. It's not about deployment it's about the process of creation. Why don't you consider each and every website running PHP also a C website?

> I wouldn't consider it python code if it is a cookie cutter website where the creator didn't have to write a single line of python. So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it? > Why don't you consider each and every website running PHP also a C website? The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majo…

> So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it?

You completely ignored the most important sentence in my comment which addresses this.

> The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majority of PHP deployments happens to be written in C.

The logic is written in PHP just as much as it is written in C. The logic is actually written in the language the creator used. Which is the wordpress UI.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#82

Post by davesmith1983 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #81

davesmith1983 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't consider it python code if it is a cookie cutter website where the creator didn't have to write a single line of python. So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it? > Why don't you consider each and every website running PHP also a C website? The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majo…

> So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it? You completely ignored the most important sentence in my comment which addresses this. > The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majority of PHP deployments happens to be written in C. The logic is written in PHP just as much as it is written in C. The l…

> You completely ignored the most important sentence in my comment which addresses this.

I did not. I've addressed it at least 2 times now. If you choose to ignore those responses that invalidate your point that is of your own doing.

> The logic is written in PHP just as much as it is written in C.

Nope. I have already shown this assertion of yours to be false as there is no requirement for the runtime to be written in C.

> The logic is actually written in the language the creator used. Which is the wordpress UI.

Issuing commands to a program (which is what is happening) does not make those commands a programming language.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#83

Post by longcommonname » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #66

Animats wrote: post #62

The big mess seems to be in the CSS/Javascript space, where fad frameworks come and go rapidly. There's more change than improvement. Visually, most web pages haven't changed much, and web development has become much harder. But we can now scroll forever. Slowly and jerkily. On the language front, we really should have had a replacement for C/C++ by now. We don't. D never got traction. Go is mostly for web back ends,…

>Rust looked promising but was taken over by the "functional" crowd and is doomed to Haskell obscurity. I think that's unfair and inaccurate. Rust is going to remain niche because most developers are happy with garbage collected languages and have no need to switch to Rust. Rust will eat a bit into C++'s domain, but I don't think it'll ever take over the world. GC is good enough, works great now and worked great 20 y…

Theres many applications where any unexpected garbage collection pause is absolutely detrimental. Even pauses when the kernel cleans up memory cache during a Malloc are detrimental.

Garbage collection is great until then.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#84

Post by cwyers » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 12:29 AM UTC

jm__87 wrote: post #5

polskibus wrote: post #4

I wonder if Scott Hanselman ever had to maintain large system while having limited resources to do so. Churn is bad for most, apart from companies who must sell new things to keep on going, like software companies. Moving fast and breaking things is great when you don't have to consider churn cost. Calling the anti-churn crowd "dark matter developers" seems at least a bit derogatory.

I've worked on a team before where we every dev said "we need to upgrade X, we're Y versions behind" and management always responded with "no budget, this is not a priority". This continued until our hand was forced by a company wide initiative to modernize some aspects of our architecture and all of a sudden our team was frowned upon for being so far behind. Then we had to spend many months on an "upgrade project".…

So, I think there's two antipatterns and a pattern here.

Antipattern one is the one where you just get on the treadmill and churn, baby, churn. Constantly replacing things, spending way too much resources on tech and not enough on meeting customer needs. This is sort of the "new sports car every two years" model, or as a certain person who hates this site enough to make linking to him pathological calls it, the Cascade Of Attention Deficit Teenagers model. Nothing stays around long enough to enter long-term maintenance, because you keep chasing after the hot shiny thing instead of having the discipline to maintain a mature product even though maintenance isn't fun.

Antipattern two is where you don't have the resources to do maintenance or to chase after the shiny thing. This is basically treating the code as a monument, or as a museum exhibition -- every time a new feature is done, you hang it in the museum, and then you go work on the next feature. The problem with this approach is that Someday The Bill Comes Due. A dependency that you have hits EOL and nobody's made a new version in three years. You spend your time writing code to duplicate features that your language's standard library added four years ago but that you don't have access to because you haven't updated your stack in eight years. New features get harder and harder to add because it gets harder to reason about what any one piece of code in the program actually does, or everything is bottlenecked by the one guy who understands the codebase. Your bus factor is one if you're lucky and zero if the bus came.

The pattern is treating your code like a house. It needs upkeep. If you just leave a leaky bit of plumbing long enough you're going to have a flooded basement, so you bite the bullet and you fix the plumbing when something happens. But you don't trade in for a new house every two years either. You have a project list and you tackle it as best you can and sometimes you take a few days off work for a big project like painting or what have you. And you build equity that lasts.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#85

Post by xvilka » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 3:52 AM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #20

Davertron wrote: post #7

The fact that you go mostly "unseen" online seems completely orthogonal to whether you love programming and keep up with the latest technologies, etc. I would consider myself "dark matter" in the respect that no one knows who I am and I'm not constantly blogging or tweeting about stuff. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in, passionate about and highly competent in technology. I find it kind of insulting actually t…

This is a really good point too, especially when considered the whole 99% rule or what not. Tech community sites like Hacker News, and web dev sites like Smashing Magazine or CSS Tricks or what not have a large audience of lurkers that keep up to date with everything mentioned there yet don't spend their time posting about it on social media. Hell, I'd say I'm in the same boat there too. Read a lot of these kinds of…

You will be surprised, but doctors also have their professional social networks, discussion boards, news sites like HN, various conferences, etc. Especially nowadays, when a huge chunk of medicine is a technology too.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#86

Post by apta » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

longcommonname wrote: post #83

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Rust looked promising but was taken over by the "functional" crowd and is doomed to Haskell obscurity. I think that's unfair and inaccurate. Rust is going to remain niche because most developers are happy with garbage collected languages and have no need to switch to Rust. Rust will eat a bit into C++'s domain, but I don't think it'll ever take over the world. GC is good enough, works great now and worked great 20 y…

Theres many applications where any unexpected garbage collection pause is absolutely detrimental. Even pauses when the kernel cleans up memory cache during a Malloc are detrimental. Garbage collection is great until then.

Your post doesn't contradict the post you're replying to. There are obviously many cases where it is no desirable to have GC, but there are even more where GC does just fine.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#87

Post by Mandatum » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #53

I keep up with modern tech. I regularly learn new languages and frameworks. I lead agile dev teams. I work as a consultant modernizing devops and moving to cloud deployments. I write real software for real businesses doing real things. I don't blog. I don't go to conferences. I don't go to hackathons. I don't have any meaningful presence on GitHub. Hacker News is about the only place I have even the slightest footpri…

Sure. I've met a lot of well-known authors at conferences and meetups. I've met people who work for big companies with R&D arms who are putting out content and products on the "bleeding edge" of technology (ala ThoughtWorks, IBM subsidiaries etc).

Most of these people love technology. They love learning about technology. They'd be perfectly happy working in technology, but because monetary success ends at being specialist consultant in a super lucrative field.. They stop.

Now they work in strategy and marketing around technology. Why? Because it's more lucrative. The job is more fun. They get to meet really, really smart people without having to work 60 hour weeks for $250K a year. (Which is great, of course, but these people have the soft-skills to add a multiplier to that amount.)

I'd be happy working 9-5 as a CRUD software developer with a great team in an OK company.

I'd be happy working in a very specialist field, earning $250K with an amazing team, in an amazing (funded) company (for a few years before shareholders start making demands).

I'm more happy working random hours around the world, meeting and talking with the smartest people in technology at a range of companies. I get to learn about what they've achieved, how they've achieved it.. Without having to burn the candle at both ends.. And I get to just play with whatever tech I feel like playing with.

They're different careers. A lot of people dabbling, or dipping their toes with blogging etc. are just doing it for a better portfolio when they company hop.

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#88

Post by mikhailfranco » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #49

mikeash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase “old C# code bases” makes me feel incredibly old.

It's almost 20 years old. That said, many of the languages considered hip are older (Python, Ruby, Javascript, etc)

... Haskell, Erlang ...

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#89

Post by xkcd-sucks » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:02 AM UTC

Mandatum wrote: post #87

caymanjim wrote: post #53

I keep up with modern tech. I regularly learn new languages and frameworks. I lead agile dev teams. I work as a consultant modernizing devops and moving to cloud deployments. I write real software for real businesses doing real things. I don't blog. I don't go to conferences. I don't go to hackathons. I don't have any meaningful presence on GitHub. Hacker News is about the only place I have even the slightest footpri…

Sure. I've met a lot of well-known authors at conferences and meetups. I've met people who work for big companies with R&D arms who are putting out content and products on the "bleeding edge" of technology (ala ThoughtWorks, IBM subsidiaries etc). Most of these people love technology. They love learning about technology. They'd be perfectly happy working in technology, but because monetary success ends at being speci…

Yeah it quickly becomes apparent in one's career that in order to actually realize any sort of personal vision it is necessary to be slotted into the "executive" box, except maybe in very large companies that have the spare resources to spend on Quality

Re: Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)

#90

Post by Davertron » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #20

Davertron wrote: post #7

The fact that you go mostly "unseen" online seems completely orthogonal to whether you love programming and keep up with the latest technologies, etc. I would consider myself "dark matter" in the respect that no one knows who I am and I'm not constantly blogging or tweeting about stuff. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in, passionate about and highly competent in technology. I find it kind of insulting actually t…

This is a really good point too, especially when considered the whole 99% rule or what not. Tech community sites like Hacker News, and web dev sites like Smashing Magazine or CSS Tricks or what not have a large audience of lurkers that keep up to date with everything mentioned there yet don't spend their time posting about it on social media. Hell, I'd say I'm in the same boat there too. Read a lot of these kinds of…

Yeah, I agree, although probably even a few years ago I wouldn't have to be honest.

I think there's just a lot of black and white thinking going on around this stuff, I.e. you're either this or that (I.e. cutting edge rock star or old crusty dinosaur...) and I just don't believe that's how it is. It's multidimensional and we're all on the various spectrums somewhere and we should stop putting value judgements on which side of the spectrum is better or worse. We all do very different things with very different requirements, so stop prescribing what's best for everyone.

Chris Coyier's The Great Divide (https://css-tricks.com/the-great-divide/), although nominally about front end development, does a pretty good job explaining this problem, and I don't think this is unique to FE at all.