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Hmm, so are you blaming the incompetence of the majority of people in the field? Also, I can't help but draw parallels to this other discussion [1] where peopl

by devxpy 7y ago

Hmm, so are you blaming the incompetence of the majority of people in the field? Also, I can't help but draw parallels to this other discussion [1] where people claim that veterans in the programming community have to "live" with python because beginners adore the syntax. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672051

thethirdone 7y ago
> Hmm, so are you blaming the incompetence of the majority of people in the field? I interpreted it as being an issue that there are so many options that being an expert in the relevant two so you can can make an educated decision is uncommon. This is probably somewhat unique to programming. There are easily more than 25 programming languages that would be important to know trade-offs between in any given programmer's career. And in each, there are competing libraries and frameworks. Woodworking is the only other profession that comes to mind for having so many competing tools.
anon9001 7y ago
It's not incompetence, and you don't know what's going on either. None of us do. Most developers I've worked with know less than me, and I don't know a fraction of all the things to be learned out there. Most people only have deep experience with their special niche, because it's a lot better to hire a "PHP developer" than a computer scientist if you actually need PHP maintained. That creates incentive on both sides for specialization of labor, and it decreases the number of people that have deep and current experience in many things. And more common tech means easier to hire workers, which gets the job done faster. It doesn't make sense for me to add Rust to a project, because now I have to both do the project and learn Rust. Plus I'm going to have trouble finding Rust programmers to maintain it. You can't teach this stuff in schools, because it changes too fast. The best we've come up with so far are those hacker bootcamps that try to ramp you up on what's hot right now so you can at least start to get in the game with the highest chance of success.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
No. I'm blaming the size of the field. Do you thoroughly know all the web frameworks? Does anyone? No. Do you thoroughly know all the major languages? Does anyone? No. Is that because everyone is incompetent? No. As an analogy, there was a time when a "renaissance man" could know much of the world's (or at least Europe's) knowledge. Then, in the late 1800s, there was a time when one person could pretty thoroughly know most of physics. Those days are over. Physics is too big. Even the best people know one area deeply, and nearby areas fairly well, and are sort of familiar with the rest of the areas. So it is with programming. It's too big to really know it all. You can't. Nobody can.

by devxpy 7y ago

thethirdone 7y ago

> Hmm, so are you blaming the incompetence of the majority of people in the field? I interpreted it as being an issue that there are so many options that being an expert in the relevant two so you can can make an educated decision is uncommon. This is probably somewhat unique to programming. There are easily more than 25 programming languages that would be important to know trade-offs between in any given programmer's career. And in each, there are competing libraries and frameworks. Woodworking is the only other profession that comes to mind for having so many competing tools.

anon9001 7y ago

It's not incompetence, and you don't know what's going on either. None of us do. Most developers I've worked with know less than me, and I don't know a fraction of all the things to be learned out there. Most people only have deep experience with their special niche, because it's a lot better to hire a "PHP developer" than a computer scientist if you actually need PHP maintained. That creates incentive on both sides for specialization of labor, and it decreases the number of people that have deep and current experience in many things. And more common tech means easier to hire workers, which gets the job done faster. It doesn't make sense for me to add Rust to a project, because now I have to both do the project and learn Rust. Plus I'm going to have trouble finding Rust programmers to maintain it. You can't teach this stuff in schools, because it changes too fast. The best we've come up with so far are those hacker bootcamps that try to ramp you up on what's hot right now so you can at least start to get in the game with the highest chance of success.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

No. I'm blaming the size of the field. Do you thoroughly know all the web frameworks? Does anyone? No. Do you thoroughly know all the major languages? Does anyone? No. Is that because everyone is incompetent? No. As an analogy, there was a time when a "renaissance man" could know much of the world's (or at least Europe's) knowledge. Then, in the late 1800s, there was a time when one person could pretty thoroughly know most of physics. Those days are over. Physics is too big. Even the best people know one area deeply, and nearby areas fairly well, and are sort of familiar with the rest of the areas. So it is with programming. It's too big to really know it all. You can't. Nobody can.