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The silent majority in software

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: The silent majority in software

#91

Post by wiseowise »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #44
verisimilitudes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a saying is what the incompetent obsessively repeat to themselves. They can't stand by the thought of people who don't need an Internet connection to program, who don't copy and paste from the fools over at StackOverflow, and the many other things they do which their betters don't. The fools over at Reddit call some things "adulting", because the idea of growing out of childhood is so foreign to them that they'd…

> we’re all amateurs, and sometimes we can be wrong. > Such a saying is what the incompetent obsessively repeat to themselves. I'll take humble over arrogant.

There’s difference between being humble and insecure. Generally people who repeat that mantra are trying to guard themselves by “we’re all fools”veil from any critique.

Re: The silent majority in software

#92

Post by tehCorner »

gernb wrote: post #89
tehCorner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are a great bunch of developers who just code for work and want to maximize leisure/family time (including me). Sometimes I also do that _fun script_ you were thinking about over the week, or play with some random programming language, but I let those cases be the exception not the norm.

There's nothing wrong with either path. For me, I like coding, just like I like eating and I like socializing. The fact that I eat and socialize at work doesn't mean I try to avoid eating and socializing outside of work. Similarly the fact that I use a computer at work and or code at work doesn't mean I try to avoid using a computer and or code outside of work. My working on whatever my company wants me to work on is…

Totally agree, I'm not saying there is a right path.

In my case, when I started in this industry 10 years ago I found most of my joy in coding, as time passed by I engaged into different hobbies that brought more joy to my life and ended up allocating more time on them than coding.

Re: The silent majority in software

#93

Post by anothernewdude »

coldtea wrote: post #61
evan_ wrote: post #8

> The “silent majority” was used by President Richard Nixon during his presidency and his campaign against the Vietnam war. He spoke to the people who were not actively voicing their opinions and who were overshadowed by the vocal few who were supporting the war. This is a shocking misunderstanding of history. The “silent majority” Nixon spoke of were folks opposed to anti-war protests . Nixon intentionally prolonged…

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature. Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was esca…

> to get talking with China.

What a waste of time that was.

Re: The silent majority in software

#94

Post by flarg »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #48

I think what the author says is true. The mass of digital workers use older, established and unfashionable technology, and are neither vocal nor particularly curious about the work. But there's an implication of moral purity at play. Are those who just quietly "mind their own business" a good, wholesome but misrepresented group? On the contrary, I think that in matters with far reaching consequences, which computing…

Curious? Hell yes. Happy to keep quiet for as long as the money keeps coming? Hell yes.

Re: The silent majority in software

#95

Post by Existenceblinks »

Indeed silence. During market research, looking for potential developers who would use our developer tools is difficult. Keep asking myself where are these guys? Tech twitter is literally javascript thingy echo chamber. Reddit is newbie marketplace with a lot of bias advice for beginners. HN is like ok boomer who don't buy anything. This is my perception.

Re: The silent majority in software

#96

Post by eternityforest »

silisili wrote: post #6

> Usually, the comments on HN/Reddit are polarised by a single group of people who have the same opinion, Can't speak for Reddit, but that's not at all the case here. For example, I often speak of my hatred of microservices here. I'll get some upvotes and agreement, some people telling me it's a dumb opinion, and some people telling me we're doing it wrong and explain their right way. Believe it or not, I learn a lot…

I don't think microservices are silent majority. They seem like more of a blogger architect who likes to tinker with stuff thing.

I would expect the true silent majority just uses monoliths. If it works and doesn't make people complain every day when they work on it, why use a microservice? That's more work.

Everyone likes to think of microservices as a modern high tech thing, but to me it seems like old fashioned unix stuff, that appeals to people who enjoy doing simple weekend projects, trying to make their job into a series of tiny projects of the type they might do at home for fun.

The focus seems more on individual parts than on the vision of the complete project.

Of course it seems to just mostly move complexity into the high level gluing it all together, and spread it out in bits of interface code, but if you are more interested in working on simple but interesting challenges, and don't mind the more hands on dev ops maintenance work, and aren't that into building complex systems, I imagine you would like it.

Re: The silent majority in software

#97

Post by lifeisstillgood »

coldtea wrote: post #61
evan_ wrote: post #8

> The “silent majority” was used by President Richard Nixon during his presidency and his campaign against the Vietnam war. He spoke to the people who were not actively voicing their opinions and who were overshadowed by the vocal few who were supporting the war. This is a shocking misunderstanding of history. The “silent majority” Nixon spoke of were folks opposed to anti-war protests . Nixon intentionally prolonged…

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature. Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was esca…

Yes. The first thing the chinese government did after Nixon ended sanctions and allowed trade, was to order 12 fertiliser plants from R W Kellogs (not the cornflakes one). Giant things that squeeze ammonia out of the atmosphere. That meant climbing out of a starvation cycle.

Nixon going to China probably saved 100s of millions of lives. Chinese lives of course but lives. Sadly for Nixon the lives he saved did not vote in Chicago.

Nixon was not evil. People arent evil. Decisions people make are evil.

Re: The silent majority in software

#98

Post by ckolkey »

rl3 wrote: post #86
evan_ wrote: post #8

> The “silent majority” was used by President Richard Nixon during his presidency and his campaign against the Vietnam war. He spoke to the people who were not actively voicing their opinions and who were overshadowed by the vocal few who were supporting the war. This is a shocking misunderstanding of history. The “silent majority” Nixon spoke of were folks opposed to anti-war protests . Nixon intentionally prolonged…

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. I mean, he did give us the EPA. What the ulterior motive was, I'm unsure.

I believe it was to undercut the numerous state-level organisations that had started appearing, consolidating power with the federal govt (and executive branch, specifically)

Re: The silent majority in software

#99

Post by Existenceblinks »

jongjong wrote: post #52

I used to be part of the silent majority of software developers but that changed after I became disillusioned about the direction of the industry. Nowadays, I'm basically forced to use certain inefficient tools in order to get a job because a bunch of highly vocal junior devs who got their way. It's a bit like in politics; when times are good for the majority, most normal people aren't interested in politics; they ha…

Yeah. This is happening, look around job board. A lot of job description look really dumb, tech stack doesn't make sense for their business at all.

Re: The silent majority in software

#100

Post by lifeisstillgood »

mcv wrote: post #85
coldtea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts. Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature. Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was esca…

He very nearly signed a Basic Income law. I originally read that the Democrats voted against it because it was too low, but more recently read that someone convinced Nixon that a Basic Income would have terrible consequences based on some faulty historical information about the Speenhamland system, which turned Nixon against BI. But it was close; he could have made history in a much more positive way than what we cur…

The seventies were an odd time - the generation who had come of age during WWII were in power. And WWII had the strangest historical anomoly - wealth was most evenly distributed post WWII than at any time prior. And it was working. It seemed a great idea to experiment with other ways to keep wealth fairly distributed. What a shame power and wealth found it's way back to the few.

We will have to fix that. preferably without a global war

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