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I don't understand why this community has to have a weekly cycle of bashing different programming communities. Every week there's a new drama thread bashing Jav

I don't understand why this community has to have a weekly cycle of bashing different programming communities. Every week there's a new drama thread bashing Java devs, Go devs, Javascript devs etc. The thing that I come to this community for every week is to read about new developments in our industry, if you don't come here for that then what are you coming here for? And wasn't it just a few months ago people were praising the innovation of Urbit for having a 'global functional namespace'? But because it's popular to hate on javascript devs for applying -- sorry, I forgot this was javascript bashing week -- for reinventing concepts from other areas in computer science and software engineering the HN community has to start hating on another programming community's work. That said this is a pretty funny satirical page, apologies to the author for venting at the HN community.

reustle 11y ago
It's sad, really. I've been coding for roughly 11 years, since I was 14 or so, and have always noticed the constant pissing matches between programmer groups. It's easy to fall into them, because when you do something a certain way for so long, another way looks so foreign and terrible. I tried to make an effort to always stay out of those arguments, but absolutely fell in here and there. Lately I've stopped coding for work and moved into a PM++ position as I build up a small agency on my own, and it has been refreshing. I build little meteor apps for fun in my free time (omg meter doesn't scale noob lol) and can keep my blinders on to what the outside world thinks, and my devs can continue to do what they are comfortable with.
TickleSteve 11y ago
its called self-regulation. Each community has its own quirks and extremes as seen by everyone else. Without the bashing, they would become even more extreme. At least after this a lot of devs will think twice about making "micro-modules".
- faizshah 11y ago
  If that were true java would have started dying a few years ago, javascript frameworks wouldn't pop up every week, and most people would use shell scripts instead of build tools. This is exactly the kind of flame war stuff the guidelines seem to have tried to stop.
  - TickleSteve 11y ago
    I think that self-regulation is a real effect... tho tempered by momentum (i.e. Java's OOP/abstractionism momentum is huge). Saying the effect exists says nothing about the effectiveness of that effect.
    - faizshah 11y ago
      I was referring to: >Without the bashing, they would become even more extreme. At least after this a lot of devs will think twice about making "micro-modules". I don't think this "self-regulation" (I called this bashing, the guidelines call this flaming) is going to make people think twice about making micro modules. If they are useful they will be used, I think this community is better than to just bash these communities and call it 'self regulation.'
  - kazagistar 11y ago
    Just a data point, but our shop has been moving away from a lot of the more heavy Spring features, and splitting our Java code into simpler microservices. I think the points about overabstraction are getting through slowly.
- pfooti 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure that attitude is called "paternalism". Self-regulation works better when it's self-directed, as opposed to other-directed (as in, someone else doing the regulation). `I shouldn't do ${foo} because people will make fun of me` is a horrible attitude to foist on anyone else, and anyone who tries to propagate that attitude isn't helping the community at all.
  - TickleSteve 11y ago
    'self' here is the wider HN community... hence the 'self' regulation.
    - pfooti 11y ago
      I kind of disagree with your central claim that this is going on. But that's my sociologist head rearing up. There is, of course, a "wider HN community", but that's probably the community of people talking about the appropriate use of downvote as disagree, or whether we should have a blackband for so-and-so reason. Communities are defined by shared experience, values, and goals. The community in question here is much more of a javascript dev community, and we can see the culture clash between them and the java, c, python communities throughout all these left-pad threads. So, I maintain: this is an attempt at other-regulation, namely people who are by-and-large not active parts of the javascript dev community making fun of the punchbag-of-the-week. I'm just cautious any time someone frames an outright attack (and make no mistake, these are attacks) as "for your own good". It rarely is.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > `I shouldn't do ${foo} because people will make fun of me...` `... but why are they laughing from ${foo} in the first place? They're smart people, so there might be a reason. Let me research it more first...`. This is how self-regulation works.
    - pfooti 11y ago
      I think there's a fundamental difference between, say [0] (thoughtful, nuanced), and [1] (just plain silly). The initial posts are all worthwhile and interesting, with the latter clearly being satire. It would be even funnier if the OP exposed a more robust string-handling library from ruby or python to the javascript runtime in node by way of a native lib binding. [2] is kind of just elitist, "get off my lawn" yelling, which misses the point fundamentally in this problem. There are different flavors of comments on these threads. Some are pretty cogent and thoughtful. Others aren't. A "sky is falling augh, isArray is one line, javascript devs are teh worst" misses the underlying problem of javascript being addressed (interpreter fragmentation, not having a reliable way to test if something is an array on older platforms). I'd argue it doesn't contribute at all to the improvement (metacognitive or otherwise) of any javascript dev, but instead serves to harden people's opinions on one side or another of a mythical line. The difference is whether the goal is to contribute to the discourse or just go for the shallow laughs. It's an important difference, because the former does lead to improvement all around, whereas the latter leads to high-fives and community decay. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352704 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350651 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11348798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11348798
- dovif 11y ago
  There are lots of quirky cargo cults creeping into the .NET world, especially since the growth of Nuget. I've seen a few projects with DI/IOC everywhere, to the extent that I expect to see a convention test that fails if the new keyword is used in a project. And the stubs and mocks. I recently had to fix a beautifully tested piece of code where the developer forgot to implement the actual functionality. The proliferation of async/await and the idea that no self-respecting app can exist without a REST API layer also grate. Cargo cults seem to move in waves, and the frequency of those waves seems to be ticking up of late.
naasking 11y ago
> I don't understand why this community has to have a weekly cycle of bashing different programming communities. It's funny if done in good taste. You should be able to take a joke with good humour, even if it's at your own expense, and this is a pretty good joke.
- faizshah 11y ago
  My comment wasn't directed at the OP it was directed at the community and these weekly community bashing cycles.
  - coryfklein 11y ago
    If you want to actually know the "why", I don't think any one person can answer for certain but I have noticed similar trends on HN and attribute it to the culture necessary among start-ups: brutally challenging assumptions and discovering failure points. I think that kind a culture is necessary in quickly shutting down projects that have a high likelihood of failure before too much time is invested in them. Unfortunately, that culture also tends to leak into many other aspects of the community.
    - BenoitP 11y ago
      > brutally challenging assumptions and discovering failure points Nicely phrased. I'd apply this to engineers in the general too. People can often speak of them (and me) as difficult; when this is really what is needed of people that make things happen. Especially on critical infrastructure. You can't really wing details on the integrity of the bridge you are building.
      - pklausler 11y ago
        "Don't implement critical systems with tools that any idiot can use, because they'll show up."
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  I don't think the general commentary is in good taste. To me the difference between a good faith joke and a bad faith joke is whether you actually like the people you are making fun of. I don't think that's the case here. My sense is that the people laughing actually think NPM and JavaScript suck. The tone I am getting is "haha, you are bad and I am a better programmer than your whole community". Is that not how you perceive it? Am I just imagining contempt where there is none? It's like, I can joke about you being an alcoholic if I think you're actually just a fun heavy drinker. If I think you're actually a violent alcoholic, it's not funny for me to joke about that.
copperx 11y ago
> I come to this community for every week is to read about new developments in our industry That's what slashdot is/was for. Here you come to find highly opinionated and more-often-than-not wrong commenters.
- jff 11y ago
  > Here you come to find highly opinionated and more-often-than-not wrong commenters. You can find those on slashdot too!
shitgoose 11y ago
they are not bashing programming communities, they are bashing stupidity.
im_down_w_otp 11y ago
I can't speak for anybody else, but you highlighted the origin of my general annoyance. Applying cross-domain concepts to improve your local domain is awesome. Applying somebody else's invention from a different domain to your local domain and then acting like you invented a new thing is... annoying. If various forms of "reinvention" didn't seem to come with a Twitter-cult and snazzy *.io website screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! See how awesome this totally new thing is that I'm pretending to have pioneered!" There'd be no inclination for anybody to respond with, "Um. You didn't invent anything. Please calm down." If you throw yourself a parade everyday celebrating the genius of having figured out how to wake-up in the morning to attend your parade, then inevitably somebody is going to rain on it.
pmlnr 11y ago
This is not new, and not limited to HN. in my opinion we need to be reminded that all tools have flaws. https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks

reustle 11y ago

It's sad, really. I've been coding for roughly 11 years, since I was 14 or so, and have always noticed the constant pissing matches between programmer groups. It's easy to fall into them, because when you do something a certain way for so long, another way looks so foreign and terrible. I tried to make an effort to always stay out of those arguments, but absolutely fell in here and there. Lately I've stopped coding for work and moved into a PM++ position as I build up a small agency on my own, and it has been refreshing. I build little meteor apps for fun in my free time (omg meter doesn't scale noob lol) and can keep my blinders on to what the outside world thinks, and my devs can continue to do what they are comfortable with.

TickleSteve 11y ago

its called self-regulation. Each community has its own quirks and extremes as seen by everyone else. Without the bashing, they would become even more extreme. At least after this a lot of devs will think twice about making "micro-modules".

faizshah 11y ago
If that were true java would have started dying a few years ago, javascript frameworks wouldn't pop up every week, and most people would use shell scripts instead of build tools. This is exactly the kind of flame war stuff the guidelines seem to have tried to stop.
- TickleSteve 11y ago
  I think that self-regulation is a real effect... tho tempered by momentum (i.e. Java's OOP/abstractionism momentum is huge). Saying the effect exists says nothing about the effectiveness of that effect.
  - faizshah 11y ago
    I was referring to: >Without the bashing, they would become even more extreme. At least after this a lot of devs will think twice about making "micro-modules". I don't think this "self-regulation" (I called this bashing, the guidelines call this flaming) is going to make people think twice about making micro modules. If they are useful they will be used, I think this community is better than to just bash these communities and call it 'self regulation.'
- kazagistar 11y ago
  Just a data point, but our shop has been moving away from a lot of the more heavy Spring features, and splitting our Java code into simpler microservices. I think the points about overabstraction are getting through slowly.
pfooti 11y ago
I'm pretty sure that attitude is called "paternalism". Self-regulation works better when it's self-directed, as opposed to other-directed (as in, someone else doing the regulation). `I shouldn't do ${foo} because people will make fun of me` is a horrible attitude to foist on anyone else, and anyone who tries to propagate that attitude isn't helping the community at all.
- TickleSteve 11y ago
  'self' here is the wider HN community... hence the 'self' regulation.
  - pfooti 11y ago
    I kind of disagree with your central claim that this is going on. But that's my sociologist head rearing up. There is, of course, a "wider HN community", but that's probably the community of people talking about the appropriate use of downvote as disagree, or whether we should have a blackband for so-and-so reason. Communities are defined by shared experience, values, and goals. The community in question here is much more of a javascript dev community, and we can see the culture clash between them and the java, c, python communities throughout all these left-pad threads. So, I maintain: this is an attempt at other-regulation, namely people who are by-and-large not active parts of the javascript dev community making fun of the punchbag-of-the-week. I'm just cautious any time someone frames an outright attack (and make no mistake, these are attacks) as "for your own good". It rarely is.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > `I shouldn't do ${foo} because people will make fun of me...` `... but why are they laughing from ${foo} in the first place? They're smart people, so there might be a reason. Let me research it more first...`. This is how self-regulation works.
  - pfooti 11y ago
    I think there's a fundamental difference between, say [0] (thoughtful, nuanced), and [1] (just plain silly). The initial posts are all worthwhile and interesting, with the latter clearly being satire. It would be even funnier if the OP exposed a more robust string-handling library from ruby or python to the javascript runtime in node by way of a native lib binding. [2] is kind of just elitist, "get off my lawn" yelling, which misses the point fundamentally in this problem. There are different flavors of comments on these threads. Some are pretty cogent and thoughtful. Others aren't. A "sky is falling augh, isArray is one line, javascript devs are teh worst" misses the underlying problem of javascript being addressed (interpreter fragmentation, not having a reliable way to test if something is an array on older platforms). I'd argue it doesn't contribute at all to the improvement (metacognitive or otherwise) of any javascript dev, but instead serves to harden people's opinions on one side or another of a mythical line. The difference is whether the goal is to contribute to the discourse or just go for the shallow laughs. It's an important difference, because the former does lead to improvement all around, whereas the latter leads to high-fives and community decay. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11352704 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350651 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11348798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11348798
dovif 11y ago
There are lots of quirky cargo cults creeping into the .NET world, especially since the growth of Nuget. I've seen a few projects with DI/IOC everywhere, to the extent that I expect to see a convention test that fails if the new keyword is used in a project. And the stubs and mocks. I recently had to fix a beautifully tested piece of code where the developer forgot to implement the actual functionality. The proliferation of async/await and the idea that no self-respecting app can exist without a REST API layer also grate. Cargo cults seem to move in waves, and the frequency of those waves seems to be ticking up of late.

naasking 11y ago

> I don't understand why this community has to have a weekly cycle of bashing different programming communities. It's funny if done in good taste. You should be able to take a joke with good humour, even if it's at your own expense, and this is a pretty good joke.

faizshah 11y ago
My comment wasn't directed at the OP it was directed at the community and these weekly community bashing cycles.
- coryfklein 11y ago
  If you want to actually know the "why", I don't think any one person can answer for certain but I have noticed similar trends on HN and attribute it to the culture necessary among start-ups: brutally challenging assumptions and discovering failure points. I think that kind a culture is necessary in quickly shutting down projects that have a high likelihood of failure before too much time is invested in them. Unfortunately, that culture also tends to leak into many other aspects of the community.
  - BenoitP 11y ago
    > brutally challenging assumptions and discovering failure points Nicely phrased. I'd apply this to engineers in the general too. People can often speak of them (and me) as difficult; when this is really what is needed of people that make things happen. Especially on critical infrastructure. You can't really wing details on the integrity of the bridge you are building.
    - pklausler 11y ago
      "Don't implement critical systems with tools that any idiot can use, because they'll show up."
erikpukinskis 11y ago
I don't think the general commentary is in good taste. To me the difference between a good faith joke and a bad faith joke is whether you actually like the people you are making fun of. I don't think that's the case here. My sense is that the people laughing actually think NPM and JavaScript suck. The tone I am getting is "haha, you are bad and I am a better programmer than your whole community". Is that not how you perceive it? Am I just imagining contempt where there is none? It's like, I can joke about you being an alcoholic if I think you're actually just a fun heavy drinker. If I think you're actually a violent alcoholic, it's not funny for me to joke about that.

copperx 11y ago

> I come to this community for every week is to read about new developments in our industry That's what slashdot is/was for. Here you come to find highly opinionated and more-often-than-not wrong commenters.

jff 11y ago
> Here you come to find highly opinionated and more-often-than-not wrong commenters. You can find those on slashdot too!

shitgoose 11y ago

they are not bashing programming communities, they are bashing stupidity.

im_down_w_otp 11y ago

I can't speak for anybody else, but you highlighted the origin of my general annoyance. Applying cross-domain concepts to improve your local domain is awesome. Applying somebody else's invention from a different domain to your local domain and then acting like you invented a new thing is... annoying. If various forms of "reinvention" didn't seem to come with a Twitter-cult and snazzy *.io website screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! See how awesome this totally new thing is that I'm pretending to have pioneered!" There'd be no inclination for anybody to respond with, "Um. You didn't invent anything. Please calm down." If you throw yourself a parade everyday celebrating the genius of having figured out how to wake-up in the morning to attend your parade, then inevitably somebody is going to rain on it.

pmlnr 11y ago

This is not new, and not limited to HN. in my opinion we need to be reminded that all tools have flaws. https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks