6 ms·

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.

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.

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.