Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!
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My first thought was the classic USAF hi-low mix doctrine about fighter platforms. But RTFAing (
) it looks like this is more of a blakeyrat strategy of getting tools that do more of the work so you don't need to be an actual programmer to make usable tools.IOW, replicate the success of Access and Excel.
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@boomzilla said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
IOW, replicate the success of Access and Excel.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. I'm sure it's going to be totally different this time, though. It's twenty seventeen!
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@blek said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@boomzilla said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
IOW, replicate the success of Access and Excel.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. I'm sure it's going to be totally different this time, though. It's twenty seventeen!
It is, indeed, two thousand and seventeen, and Excel is still with us. I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this, though.
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@steve_the_cynic I mean it's 2017, so this time making random people you find at the office program things will actually work and not result in million-line unmaintainable Excel macros that will eventually end up featured on the front page.
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HEY GUYYYYYYYTHHHHHHHZZZZZZ let's make our development environments basically impossible to use without needing to master a bunch of obscure command line commands, javascript, grunt, directed graph theory, angular8, mvvmcmvm architecture, dicker, kubernutes.....
HHHHHHEYYYYYYYYYY why are people solving business problems without using our tools!?!?!
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@apapadimoulis Uh, excuse me sir, but it is an acyclic directed graph, knowing that is apparently critical to storing several slightly different versions of the same text file.
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@apapadimoulis said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
HEY GUYYYYYYYTHHHHHHHZZZZZZ let's make our development environments basically impossible to use without needing to master a bunch of obscure command line commands, javascript, grunt, directed graph theory, angular
89, mvvmcmvm architecture, dicker, kubernutes.....HHHHHHEYYYYYYYYYY why are people solving business problems without using our tools!?!?!
FTF 5 minutes from now.
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@blakeyrat Look, it's pretty simple. Any moron who's studied high level mathematics for 4 years and bored all their friends silly talking about why an O(N) algorithm is clearly better than an O(NlogN) one could understand it with only a few weeks of study. Here's a link to a manual that assumes you already understand it and just need a quick refresher
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@blek said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@steve_the_cynic I mean it's 2017, so this time making random people you find at the office program things will actually work and not result in million-line unmaintainable Excel macros that will eventually end up featured on the front page.
I see you have self-diagnosed as a hopeless optimist.
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"It's easy to dismiss these tools as something only for business users, not a serious tool you'd put side-by-side with Java or Node.js," Hammond said.
serious tool
Java or Node.js
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In a previous life, management got so tired of customers asking for custom reports with columns x, y, and z that they built a graphical query tool. Surely, these customers would be able to understand the subtleties of joins and tabular relationships. Suddenly, there was a big demand for training seminars on how to use this tool and tech support on why the results returned did not match expectations as well as a big push for some "pre-built" reports to ship with the tool.
Moral of the story: if you make a powerful inner platform, you're gonna need a programmer to work with it.
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@groaner said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
Moral of the story: if you make a powerful inner platform, you're gonna need a programmer to work with it.
Yes, very much.
I work with various complex scientific data analysis software, and most of them have some kind of built-in "scripting" facilities whereas the user can write custom mathematical equations to apply on their data (most equations are standard for the domain and thus have dedicated UIs and displays, but there are always special cases). Being built by developers, these "scripts" usually allow complex expressions, at least "if", sometimes even "for" or "goto", and when developers work on a production project, they can make custom scripts that are deadly efficient using those. But of course, users being users and not developers, they don't do more than "a + b".
What makes me go
is not that this happens (which is entirely normal!) but that some developers go mad at users who don't understand these things.My conclusion is that a lot of developers (not all, but many) are simply unaware, or unable to empathize enough to see, that users are not developers. That is trivial, but it hurts seeing that mistake being made again and again...
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@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
My conclusion is that a lot of developers (not all, but many) are simply unaware, or unable to empathize enough to see, that users are not developers. That is trivial, but it hurts seeing that mistake being made again and again...
Yeah, that's the same thing that leads to Programmer UI and it's why hallway usability tests are so important. It's genuinely hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's new to your application when you're immersed in exactly how it works under the covers. It's hard even when you specifically try, and a lot of people don't even think to make the attempt.
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@jaloopa said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
a lot of people don't even think to make the attempt.
That is what I wanted to point out. I mean, I agree with the rest of what you said (and with that bit as well), but I am frustrated to see so many devs who don't even have the idea that what works for them might not work for someone else.
It's not "I don't know what works for the others so I'll do what works for me" (which is bad, but at least you're aware that you're doing sub-optimal stuff), nor "everybody must think the same way I do so what works for me is good" (which is worse), it's more like "I am writing stuff for me only" (which is, I guess, the worst?).
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@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@jaloopa said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
a lot of people don't even think to make the attempt.
That is what I wanted to point out. I mean, I agree with the rest of what you said (and with that bit as well), but I am frustrated to see so many devs who don't even have the idea that what works for them might not work for someone else.
It's not "I don't know what works for the others so I'll do what works for me" (which is bad, but at least you're aware that you're doing sub-optimal stuff), nor "everybody must think the same way I do so what works for me is good" (which is worse), it's more like "I am writing stuff for me only" (which is, I guess, the worst?).
Actually, I'd rank them as the first thing, then the third, and then, leading the pack in badness by a couple of light years, ""everybody must think the same way I do so what works for me is good".
Why? Because "everybody must think the same way I do so what works for me is good" could well look reasonable until you try to use it, while "I am writing stuff for me only" will be obviously like that from the moment you see it, so you expect it to be awful.
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@steve_the_cynic I see what you mean, but actually I believe we're saying the same thing, which is that not even considering that other people may think differently is worse than guessing how they think.
Anyway. Almost all UI is bad, in part because very few developers care about UI.
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@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
My conclusion is that a lot of developers (not all, but many) are simply unaware, or unable to empathize enough to see, that users are not developers. That is trivial, but it hurts seeing that mistake being made again and again...
And then you go into the next thread over and there's an article like "you should talk to all these open source projects about programming."
Because it's programming, just programming, writing code, more code, text into computers, all the programming, doing the algorithms.
Never design, or research, or testing or even just sitting back and thinking. Nope. All software development is in 2017 is programming. Programming programming programming. If you're not typing typing typing all the time, you're not doing software development, there's nothing to know except programming, you don't need domain knowledge, you don't need soft-skills, you only need programming programming programming.
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@blakeyrat said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
My conclusion is that a lot of developers (not all, but many) are simply unaware, or unable to empathize enough to see, that users are not developers. That is trivial, but it hurts seeing that mistake being made again and again...
And then you go into the next thread over and there's an article like "you should talk to all these open source projects about programming."
Because it's programming, just programming, writing code, more code, text into computers, all the programming, doing the algorithms.
Never design, or research, or testing or even just sitting back and thinking. Nope. All software development is in 2017 is programming. Programming programming programming. If you're not typing typing typing all the time, you're not doing software development, there's nothing to know except programming, you don't need domain knowledge, you don't need soft-skills, you only need programming programming programming.
The first item in the listicle is LITERALLY "Hone your soft skills."
Number 9 is, " Learn more about the business side."
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@blakeyrat I agree. But even here, it seems some people (@masonwheeler, as far as I remember?) think their role as a programmer is only to write code, and nothing more. So yeah, it doesn't bode well for the user-friendliness of future software...
Also, let's be honest, the way the industry is structured with a lot of small silos where one guy writes SQL queries and another writes the JS to display the results of the query and never shall the two speak together, well, that doesn't help.
(just because I can't help it: the grain of truth IMO about the advice to participate in open source projects is that, for the programming part and only for that part, it is a great way to be in contact with a lot of other developers and actually share code, which is kind of hard to achieve otherwise... so it is useful to go from "I've heard there is thing called a programming language" to "I can write a program in that language")
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@boomzilla Don't interrupt my rant with facts.
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@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
Also, let's be honest, the way the industry is structured with a lot of small silos where one guy writes SQL queries and another writes the JS to display the results of the query and never shall the two speak together, well, that doesn't help.
I think some people are resistant to making programming easier because if the coding was easy, they'd have to learn other things.
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@yamikuronue said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
I think some people are resistant to making programming easier because if the coding was easy, they'd have to learn other things.
I think it'd be great if programming were easier. Some of the people I work with really need it. Plus, I could spend more time doing more interesting and difficult things and less time "making license plates."
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@blakeyrat said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@boomzilla
Don't interrupt my rant with factsForget it, I'm rolling..
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@blek said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@steve_the_cynic I mean it's 2017, so this time making random people you find at the office program things will actually work and not result in million-line unmaintainable Excel macros that will eventually end up featured on the front page.
Making programming easier will always result in lots of bad code being created.
That's not a valid argument against making programming easier.
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@yamikuronue said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
I think some people are resistant to making programming easier because if the coding was easy, they'd have to learn other things.
I want programming to be really easy because I suspect it is inherently hard.
The hardest part? Taking an ill-defined description of the problem and wrestling it into a well-enough defined form that a system without common sense (i.e., a computer or a bureaucrat) can carry it out for me. Once the problem is turned into even a relatively basic program-like description, the rest of programming is relatively simple, rarely requiring more than understanding one small part of the system at a time.
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Yeah, I didn't mean you guys, you guys are great :)
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@yamikuronue Don't go thinking that flattery will make us stop arguing with people who agree with us.
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@boomzilla But you argue so handsomely, I'm overwhelmed by your virile pedantry!
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@yamikuronue said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@boomzilla But you argue so handsomely, I'm overwhelmed by your virile pedantry!
-fans self-
i know, the sheer tugid mass of his pulsating, virile..... pedantry.... Why it makes me quite hot under the collar I don't mind admitting!
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@blakeyrat said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
@remi said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
My conclusion is that a lot of developers (not all, but many) are simply unaware, or unable to empathize enough to see, that users are not developers. That is trivial, but it hurts seeing that mistake being made again and again...
And then you go into the next thread over and there's an article like "you should talk to all these open source projects about programming."
Because it's programming, just programming, writing code, more code, text into computers, all the programming, doing the algorithms.
Never design, or research, or testing or even just sitting back and thinking. Nope. All software development is in 2017 is programming. Programming programming programming. If you're not typing typing typing all the time, you're not doing software development, there's nothing to know except programming, you don't need domain knowledge, you don't need soft-skills, you only need programming programming programming.
Probably because it's easiest, but looks and sounds the most complicated and technical. And it had just enough thinking involved to potentially be fun, like working through the old adventures games full of arcane puzzles, like Myst.
The rest of the stuff is, to people who want to be capital-P programmers, the mundane, uninteresting, even annoying, side work that comes with the job.
Which is stupid, but I understand where it comes from.
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@blakeyrat said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
Never design, or research, or testing or even just sitting back and thinking. Nope. All software development is in 2017 is programming. Programming programming programming. If you're not typing typing typing all the time, you're not doing software development, there's nothing to know except programming, you don't need domain knowledge, you don't need soft-skills, you only need programming programming programming.
By some accounts, all software development in 2017 is coding. We are all reduced to being "coders". Well, if we don't push back on that, we are doomed...
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@yamikuronue said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
I think some people are resistant to making programming easier because if the coding was easy, they'd have to learn other things.
The problem is that the complexity necessarily increases with the flexibility. While you can simplify domain-specific things in niche languages, general purpose languages are kinda stuck with being "hard".
I don't think we can really go that much further with simplifying general purpose languages, other than making separating the layers of your application easier. If more languages/toolkits offered stuff like templating with really basic action binding out of the box, this would go a long way. For example, take QML (I'm sure WinForms or whatever other equivalents there are make the effort as well, I just can't judge them because I have no experience with them), which is designed as a markup language for building UIs. A button that can show some text, for example:
Label { id: helloLabel text: "Hello, World" visible: false } Button { text: "Click me!" onClick: helloLabel.visible = true }You can also just call a JavaScript or an exposed C++ function that way. This is the part that can be made simple. And, honestly, I don't think that the C++ monstrosity the button click might call being hard to write is necessarily bad: it's a general purpose, high-performance language. It's always going to be hard. But letting someone else design the interface in a pretty simple way, that's a laudable goal.
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@steve_the_cynic Given the obtusely vague definitions some people have of programming...? It's coding all the way down and nothing else to those people.
The difference between coders and programmers is evident when the programmer has to get involved in a problem the coders can't solve. This has a recurring theme across my career where everyone around me can usually get by but when they get out of their depth, they're really out of their depth and someone way more competent has to get involved.
The part that bothers me is how much of modern software dev is really API gluing, because someone else has already built the parts for you - often badly.
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@arantor said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
The part that bothers me is how much of modern software dev is really API gluing, because someone else has already built the parts for you - often badly.
Come over to the dark side, and become one of the people trying to make better APIs…
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@dkf the collection of libraries available on PHP's package manager is kinda lame, after all... they're all various shades of shite.
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@arantor said in Can't find good developers? Don't worry: hire shit ones instead!:
The part that bothers me is how much of modern software dev is really API gluing, because someone else has already built the parts for you - often badly.
And if you try to do a better job yourself most of the industry will admonish you and immediately yell "NIH!" without even listening to your rationale for doing so...
Filed under: The knights who say NIH!
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