5 ms·

How to DOS a developer

131 points by emarcotte 16y ago

jrockway 16y ago
This DOS is easy to fix. Just ignore the person. I find the following things quite easy to do: not replying to random emails, ignoring stuff on irc.
- wladimir 16y ago
  Even better solution: ask to be paid for (non developer-to-developer) support. The best way to prevent DOS is to have a price. Not that it makes interacting with such jerks fun, but at least you get something in return.
goodside 16y ago
"Be verbose. As verbose you can be. If you can say something in one sentence or three paragraphs (with three overlapping or identical examples), choose the latter. Searching for signal in lots of noise is a favourite pasttime of many developers." Pot, kettle, black, etc.
- arkitaip 16y ago
  I think he was making an example.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    At one shop I worked at, the devs just started filtering the output of one tester to the trash. Not that she didn't have something useful to say. It just wasn't worth dealing with the other 99 posts that were noise.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
kgtm 16y ago
"How to Disk Operating System a developer?" Oh come on. It's DoS. Pretty please? Not respecting capitalization is definitely a way to DoS a developer...
- mahmud 16y ago
  Yeah, if you're gonna right a smug article about your profession, at least get the lingo write.
  - kgtm 16y ago
    I see what you did there...
sambeau 16y ago
This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and had to talk to the mechanic, or the first time you took clothes to be dry-cleaned. It feels belittling, doesn't it?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". Do two things: Comprehend these stories as a description of the impedance mismatch. Design your systems with this data in mind. To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and had to talk to the mechanic, or the first time you took clothes to be dry-cleaned. It feels belittling, doesn't it? Amazing how many people and institutions encounter the mismatch and do nothing about it. It sucks. It sucks = Pain. Pain = opportunity.
- mduerksen 16y ago
  > Devs are generally bad communicators That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true. Besides, I don't think the author claims that "users are stupid", but that they often don't take the time and diligence to make their case as clear as possible, because they lack awareness that the open-source devs are doing them a favor. Apart from that, I do fear that writing this article probably won't help solving the problem.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true. I have observed a few devs who are not so good at understanding a different point of view while they are also fairly attention getting. I think this is where the idea comes from. Also, it's pretty hard for a non-dev to understand a dev's POV, which adds to the communications problems.
mathnode 16y ago
It's similiar to my dating tactic: "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "FINE YES!"
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Do you find yourself making telephone calls that are disconnected numbers or are answered by someone unexpected?
- nakkiel 16y ago
  You should reverse-engineer your dates: "You really don't wanna go a date with me." Unfortunately it works. Problems will arise when your date will realize she really shouldn't have gone on a date with you.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tybris 16y ago
Oh they're so sensitive these "developers".
jedsmith 16y ago
When I read about this I always think about Joel Spolsky's observation about 15-minute distractions that affect programmers. When you start thinking about your day in those terms, telling the people talking to you to get bent (in nicer terms) starts to be justified. Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds). http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html The entire discussion about the zone is enlightening. If you haven't read it, do so; it'll make you think during your day.
jpr 16y ago
I think this illustrates why FOSS hasn't taken, and probably won't take the "mainstream" by storm. Users communicating directly with developers is a nice idea that sounds good at first, but unfortunately it can't really work when a) there are many orders of magnitude more users than developers b) users are not technologically advanced enough to provide the developers with useful (and preferably only useful) information about the bugs This means that developers are effectively DoS:ed to death when trying to directly support a piece of software with lots of non-tech-geek users. What could solve the problem would be a group of people between developers and users which could translate normal language to and from tech-speak, and evaluate the importance of different bugs. I guess this can be automated to some extent with bug-tracking software, but I don't think it's enough when the software in question has lots and lots of users.
shib71 16y ago
If anyone wants to contribute to a FOSS project but aren't confident about their coding chops: fleshing out bug reports and clearly defining their scope will make a HUGE difference.

131 points by emarcotte 16y ago

This DOS is easy to fix. Just ignore the person. I find the following things quite easy to do: not replying to random emails, ignoring stuff on irc.

wladimir 16y ago
Even better solution: ask to be paid for (non developer-to-developer) support. The best way to prevent DOS is to have a price. Not that it makes interacting with such jerks fun, but at least you get something in return.

goodside 16y ago

"Be verbose. As verbose you can be. If you can say something in one sentence or three paragraphs (with three overlapping or identical examples), choose the latter. Searching for signal in lots of noise is a favourite pasttime of many developers." Pot, kettle, black, etc.

arkitaip 16y ago
I think he was making an example.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  At one shop I worked at, the devs just started filtering the output of one tester to the trash. Not that she didn't have something useful to say. It just wasn't worth dealing with the other 99 posts that were noise.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

kgtm 16y ago

"How to Disk Operating System a developer?" Oh come on. It's DoS. Pretty please? Not respecting capitalization is definitely a way to DoS a developer...

mahmud 16y ago
Yeah, if you're gonna right a smug article about your profession, at least get the lingo write.
- kgtm 16y ago
  I see what you did there...

sambeau 16y ago

This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". While it is not untrue it misses the underlying problem: Devs are generally bad communicators and have an unrealistic assumption about the language and technical understanding of their users which they translate into "users are stupid". To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and had to talk to the mechanic, or the first time you took clothes to be dry-cleaned. It feels belittling, doesn't it?

stcredzero 16y ago
This is an example of my least-favourite type of HN story: "Devs are clever; users are stupid". Do two things: Comprehend these stories as a description of the impedance mismatch. Design your systems with this data in mind. To get a feel for how this feels consider the last time you took a car to be fixed and had to talk to the mechanic, or the first time you took clothes to be dry-cleaned. It feels belittling, doesn't it? Amazing how many people and institutions encounter the mismatch and do nothing about it. It sucks. It sucks = Pain. Pain = opportunity.
mduerksen 16y ago
> Devs are generally bad communicators That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true. Besides, I don't think the author claims that "users are stupid", but that they often don't take the time and diligence to make their case as clear as possible, because they lack awareness that the open-source devs are doing them a favor. Apart from that, I do fear that writing this article probably won't help solving the problem.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  That's a myth IMHO, there is no evidence that this is true. I have observed a few devs who are not so good at understanding a different point of view while they are also fairly attention getting. I think this is where the idea comes from. Also, it's pretty hard for a non-dev to understand a dev's POV, which adds to the communications problems.

mathnode 16y ago

It's similiar to my dating tactic: "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "Want to go for a drink with me?" "FINE YES!"

stcredzero 16y ago
Do you find yourself making telephone calls that are disconnected numbers or are answered by someone unexpected?
nakkiel 16y ago
You should reverse-engineer your dates: "You really don't wanna go a date with me." Unfortunately it works. Problems will arise when your date will realize she really shouldn't have gone on a date with you.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tybris 16y ago

Oh they're so sensitive these "developers".

jedsmith 16y ago

When I read about this I always think about Joel Spolsky's observation about 15-minute distractions that affect programmers. When you start thinking about your day in those terms, telling the people talking to you to get bent (in nicer terms) starts to be justified. Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds). http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html The entire discussion about the zone is enlightening. If you haven't read it, do so; it'll make you think during your day.

jpr 16y ago

I think this illustrates why FOSS hasn't taken, and probably won't take the "mainstream" by storm. Users communicating directly with developers is a nice idea that sounds good at first, but unfortunately it can't really work when a) there are many orders of magnitude more users than developers b) users are not technologically advanced enough to provide the developers with useful (and preferably only useful) information about the bugs This means that developers are effectively DoS:ed to death when trying to directly support a piece of software with lots of non-tech-geek users. What could solve the problem would be a group of people between developers and users which could translate normal language to and from tech-speak, and evaluate the importance of different bugs. I guess this can be automated to some extent with bug-tracking software, but I don't think it's enough when the software in question has lots and lots of users.

shib71 16y ago

If anyone wants to contribute to a FOSS project but aren't confident about their coding chops: fleshing out bug reports and clearly defining their scope will make a HUGE difference.