10 ms·

Contempt Culture (2015)

54 points by Gigablah 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
damagednoob 10y ago
Welcome to the new status quo: Safe spaces for users of PHP.
- overgard 10y ago
  In this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U I have no interest going around belittling people for choices that work for them, but this implicit idea that technological decisions are all a matter of taste and nobody can criticize them is dumb to me.
meira 10y ago
Do OP thinks that what we accomplished until now with this mindset isn't a great achievement? I understand the point about minorities more commonly get stuck at considered worse technologies -I got stuck with PHP for 7 years - but help them to stay more comfortable with these tools will do no good. They will get siloed.
- eyelidlessness 10y ago
  I too was stuck using PHP for years. Both for career (that's the kind of jobs I was getting) and cultural (exactly what the article is talking about) reasons. Encountering more inclusive peers using other technologies didn't make me feel more comfortable using PHP, it made me feel more comfortable trying new technologies.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  I didn't see the author advocating for making them comfortable. Not being dismissive and snide still allows you to be critical in a constructive way.
mynameislegion 10y ago
On one hand, sometimes languages are bad. More specifically, if we choose to define the utility of a language based not on its features and high points, but on its drawbacks and fundamental failings, then it's very straightforward for a cosmopolitan hacker to develop bad impressions of certain languages. The fact that those same languages show up as punching bags over and over, particularly PHP, JS, Java, and C++, should hopefully indicate to us as a community that these languages should be shunned and avoided. On the other hand, the people wielding those languages do not deserve any hate, shame, nor prejudice. Attacking people for using a language is like attacking people for any other opinion that they might harbor; it is bigotry. There is no reason to be a bigot when it comes to languages; it should suffice merely to hold the opinion, to have the opinion be well-reasoned, and to always be conscientious of how we treat the people around us. (I cannot believe that I had to write the previous paragraph, but HN's inability to hold this discussion in a calm and rational way in the past has made it clear that I must directly tell you all to not be bigots. Disappointing.) It is a recurring pattern that discussions about these low-quality languages turn into us-vs.-them discussions, where one side harbors people who espouse the opinion that the language in question is low-quality, and the other side consists of people who use the language in question on a daily basis. The first side needs to avoid attacking and hurting people on the other side. It is unhelpful and derails the conversation. In particular, trying to communicate an idea of the form, "You need to be aware of the language's failings and flaws, and understand that not all other languages have these problems," is subtle and cannot be done while simultaneously flinging insults. On the other side, we all must realize that our favorite languages are terrible. Our languages, like almost all facets of computing in this era, are primitive. We have only a few fundamental rules which guide our knowledge of computing, but otherwise we are usually walking blind, exploring and feeling our way through a field which is still largely unlit. When we discuss the failings of a particular language, we are trying to build up our understanding of which linguistic features do not work, and which features should be avoided. In summary, we should kill PHP and JS, but we should have empathy for those who use these languages, and we should make sure that we learn from the mistakes which these languages embody as we step forward.
- cafard 10y ago
  Empathy for the kids at Facebook with stock options?
shoefly 10y ago
I had a Python developer proclaim to me that Java was stupid and Python was great. It was a funny moment for me. You can get a lot of things done faster in Python, but performance is much better with Java. People in glass houses should not throw stones.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  You need both statically typed language and interpreted ones. But interpreted languages should only be the glue that is used with restrain and care, it shouldn't be the heart of a system. You said it yourself, sometimes you need things to be done faster, but most of the time systems should be robust. Python is an excellent companion to Java. Python is one of the most versatile language out there while Java is one of the most robust.
david-given 10y ago
I remember this from last year, but there's no timestamp on the article. Does it need a (2015) in the title?
- damagednoob 10y ago
  I think it's relatively new. There's a podcast where the topic is dicussed in more detail: https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/273-rr-contempt-culture-with-aurynn-shaw https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/273-rr-contempt-culture-with-...
- dang 10y ago
  Good catch: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=aurynn.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=aurynn.com. Added.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
I disagree with the article. There is a lot of bad technology being pushed via social hacks - examples include PHP, MongoDB, NodeJS and Go. Typically the social hacks are low learning curve + easy tutorials that gloss over important details [1] + rapid setup + culture of piling on tech debt (e.g. rails ignoring how relational DBs work). Technical superiority, particularly if that superiority requires people to learn new things, has demonstrated an inability to gain traction. So if we want superior technologies to win, we'll need to engage in some social hacks of our own. Vocal and demonstrable elitism is a valid social hack - if the people who are demonstrably great coders are proponents of Haskell and sneering at PHP, while the code monkeys are all using PHP, that's a pretty clear social signal. Who wants to be part of the code monkey crowd? When I was younger, and nothing but a BasicA/Visual Basic coder, these attitudes pushed me towards learning C and Perl (yes I'm showing my age). I saw all the better coders using these superior technologies with a higher learning curve. I realized that I had a lot to learn, I put in the effort and I learned it. With the decline of hacker culture, I don't see that happening anywhere near as much these days. [1] E.g. a while back there were RoR tutorials that used update_attributes (skipping input validation) to show how easy RoR is. Net result was various hacks, I think including Homakov's hack of github.
- Allower 10y ago
  i see you are still a child regardless of your age. Its funny watching you argue for elitism though
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Here's the thing though: The end user, the one who pays the majority of our bills, doesn't give a shit about your language choice, your code, your DB choice, or any of it. They care if it works, if it's easy to use, and usually if it looks nice and that's about it. People publish blog posts about how they aren't using MongoDB or aren't using PHP anymore because X and Y and do you know who cares? Pretty much no one aside from the pro PHP people who get mad or the anti-mongo people who point to it as justification for their part in a completely pointless argument. Yes, low skill and approachable languages attract amateur coders because that's what they're supposed to do. PHP was designed from the get go to be an accessible web server language that anybody could use, that was the POINT so naturally anybody who can will use it. I've seen brilliant PHP websites and I've seen utterly garbage C code, and both of those reversed too. There is a correlation between use of high level languages and skill but it is far from a fixed relationship, so to parade about someone's use of those to justify their arrogance as a programmer relative to people who are WELL AWARE that they are better than them just makes that person look like a windbag. /rant
ajamesm 10y ago
It's easier to get up and started with PHP, which attracts people new to coding. I don't have any contempt for them. It's a language with a very low barrier to entry. I have INFINITE contempt for professional programmers who (1) use PHP (2) have never used anything else and (3) vociferously defend PHP because it "gets things done" but then (4) leak MD5 hashes of credit card info in an error page. Why wouldn't I be contemptuous of fraudsters?
- ixtli 10y ago
  I remember when this was true but I don't think it is anymore. Whenever someone asks me to teach them how to program from scratch I always introduce them to the REPL first. You know, "1 + 1 prints 2!" The easiest way to do that for some time has been the chrome dev tools.
  - ajamesm 10y ago
    A JS REPL is definitely faster for zero to Hello World... how about to standing up a toy blog on a local stack? What's the comparative effort vs. PHP?
plurinshael 10y ago
Well spoken. When I hear people belittling others, no matter how "good" the reason, I think damn, have some respect. And also just, have some dignity. If you really want to influence someone's behavior, engage them, ask them honest questions, accept them. If you do not want to influence their behavior, leave them alone. Do not drag your own heart through mockery and judgment and scorn because it was done to you, or because others will find it funny. Those marks on your heart will be visible to all, and truly, you will feel them in your dark hours. "When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready."
- smacktoward 10y ago
  The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao.
Allower 10y ago
AH YES, childish people are childish. how enlightening
ixtli 10y ago
I have always thought that one of JavaScript (or at least the community's) best assets is the fact that no one defends it as "the best" or "the next big thing." Everyone embraces discussing its faults or mocking poorly written JS and admitting that it happens a lot. I think this allows the community to be honest when teaching people how to avoid its pitfalls and puts the spotlight on frameworks and libraries that encourage good patterns.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
michaelfeathers 10y ago
I think the real problem is being able to distinguish between criticism of a language and criticism of the people using it. The former is ok, the latter isn't. If we take a criticism of a technology we use as criticism of us, it's a rather unhealthy state to be in. Technologies come and go. They aren't something we should immerse our identity in.
Roboprog 10y ago
Perhaps some of the contempt is due to suffering at the hands of management who insists that there is one golden hammer (language) that must be used for all problems. Not being able to switch tools for different tasks is a source of frustration, and this frustration WILL find a vent :-)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
When I reach the "Shut. Up." section the article feels more like a re-expression of its subject than an overcoming. These tendencies are harder to overcome than they seem. They're slippery, and there's good in them as well as bad.

54 points by Gigablah 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

damagednoob 10y ago

Welcome to the new status quo: Safe spaces for users of PHP.

overgard 10y ago
In this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U I have no interest going around belittling people for choices that work for them, but this implicit idea that technological decisions are all a matter of taste and nobody can criticize them is dumb to me.

meira 10y ago

Do OP thinks that what we accomplished until now with this mindset isn't a great achievement? I understand the point about minorities more commonly get stuck at considered worse technologies -I got stuck with PHP for 7 years - but help them to stay more comfortable with these tools will do no good. They will get siloed.

eyelidlessness 10y ago
I too was stuck using PHP for years. Both for career (that's the kind of jobs I was getting) and cultural (exactly what the article is talking about) reasons. Encountering more inclusive peers using other technologies didn't make me feel more comfortable using PHP, it made me feel more comfortable trying new technologies.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
GavinMcG 10y ago
I didn't see the author advocating for making them comfortable. Not being dismissive and snide still allows you to be critical in a constructive way.

mynameislegion 10y ago

On one hand, sometimes languages are bad. More specifically, if we choose to define the utility of a language based not on its features and high points, but on its drawbacks and fundamental failings, then it's very straightforward for a cosmopolitan hacker to develop bad impressions of certain languages. The fact that those same languages show up as punching bags over and over, particularly PHP, JS, Java, and C++, should hopefully indicate to us as a community that these languages should be shunned and avoided. On the other hand, the people wielding those languages do not deserve any hate, shame, nor prejudice. Attacking people for using a language is like attacking people for any other opinion that they might harbor; it is bigotry. There is no reason to be a bigot when it comes to languages; it should suffice merely to hold the opinion, to have the opinion be well-reasoned, and to always be conscientious of how we treat the people around us. (I cannot believe that I had to write the previous paragraph, but HN's inability to hold this discussion in a calm and rational way in the past has made it clear that I must directly tell you all to not be bigots. Disappointing.) It is a recurring pattern that discussions about these low-quality languages turn into us-vs.-them discussions, where one side harbors people who espouse the opinion that the language in question is low-quality, and the other side consists of people who use the language in question on a daily basis. The first side needs to avoid attacking and hurting people on the other side. It is unhelpful and derails the conversation. In particular, trying to communicate an idea of the form, "You need to be aware of the language's failings and flaws, and understand that not all other languages have these problems," is subtle and cannot be done while simultaneously flinging insults. On the other side, we all must realize that our favorite languages are terrible. Our languages, like almost all facets of computing in this era, are primitive. We have only a few fundamental rules which guide our knowledge of computing, but otherwise we are usually walking blind, exploring and feeling our way through a field which is still largely unlit. When we discuss the failings of a particular language, we are trying to build up our understanding of which linguistic features do not work, and which features should be avoided. In summary, we should kill PHP and JS, but we should have empathy for those who use these languages, and we should make sure that we learn from the mistakes which these languages embody as we step forward.

cafard 10y ago
Empathy for the kids at Facebook with stock options?

shoefly 10y ago

I had a Python developer proclaim to me that Java was stupid and Python was great. It was a funny moment for me. You can get a lot of things done faster in Python, but performance is much better with Java. People in glass houses should not throw stones.

spriggan3 10y ago
You need both statically typed language and interpreted ones. But interpreted languages should only be the glue that is used with restrain and care, it shouldn't be the heart of a system. You said it yourself, sometimes you need things to be done faster, but most of the time systems should be robust. Python is an excellent companion to Java. Python is one of the most versatile language out there while Java is one of the most robust.

david-given 10y ago

I remember this from last year, but there's no timestamp on the article. Does it need a (2015) in the title?

damagednoob 10y ago
I think it's relatively new. There's a podcast where the topic is dicussed in more detail: https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/273-rr-contempt-culture-with-aurynn-shaw https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/273-rr-contempt-culture-with-...
dang 10y ago
Good catch: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=aurynn.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=aurynn.com. Added.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

I disagree with the article. There is a lot of bad technology being pushed via social hacks - examples include PHP, MongoDB, NodeJS and Go. Typically the social hacks are low learning curve + easy tutorials that gloss over important details [1] + rapid setup + culture of piling on tech debt (e.g. rails ignoring how relational DBs work). Technical superiority, particularly if that superiority requires people to learn new things, has demonstrated an inability to gain traction. So if we want superior technologies to win, we'll need to engage in some social hacks of our own. Vocal and demonstrable elitism is a valid social hack - if the people who are demonstrably great coders are proponents of Haskell and sneering at PHP, while the code monkeys are all using PHP, that's a pretty clear social signal. Who wants to be part of the code monkey crowd? When I was younger, and nothing but a BasicA/Visual Basic coder, these attitudes pushed me towards learning C and Perl (yes I'm showing my age). I saw all the better coders using these superior technologies with a higher learning curve. I realized that I had a lot to learn, I put in the effort and I learned it. With the decline of hacker culture, I don't see that happening anywhere near as much these days. [1] E.g. a while back there were RoR tutorials that used update_attributes (skipping input validation) to show how easy RoR is. Net result was various hacks, I think including Homakov's hack of github.

Allower 10y ago
i see you are still a child regardless of your age. Its funny watching you argue for elitism though
FussyZeus 10y ago
Here's the thing though: The end user, the one who pays the majority of our bills, doesn't give a shit about your language choice, your code, your DB choice, or any of it. They care if it works, if it's easy to use, and usually if it looks nice and that's about it. People publish blog posts about how they aren't using MongoDB or aren't using PHP anymore because X and Y and do you know who cares? Pretty much no one aside from the pro PHP people who get mad or the anti-mongo people who point to it as justification for their part in a completely pointless argument. Yes, low skill and approachable languages attract amateur coders because that's what they're supposed to do. PHP was designed from the get go to be an accessible web server language that anybody could use, that was the POINT so naturally anybody who can will use it. I've seen brilliant PHP websites and I've seen utterly garbage C code, and both of those reversed too. There is a correlation between use of high level languages and skill but it is far from a fixed relationship, so to parade about someone's use of those to justify their arrogance as a programmer relative to people who are WELL AWARE that they are better than them just makes that person look like a windbag. /rant

ajamesm 10y ago

It's easier to get up and started with PHP, which attracts people new to coding. I don't have any contempt for them. It's a language with a very low barrier to entry. I have INFINITE contempt for professional programmers who (1) use PHP (2) have never used anything else and (3) vociferously defend PHP because it "gets things done" but then (4) leak MD5 hashes of credit card info in an error page. Why wouldn't I be contemptuous of fraudsters?

ixtli 10y ago
I remember when this was true but I don't think it is anymore. Whenever someone asks me to teach them how to program from scratch I always introduce them to the REPL first. You know, "1 + 1 prints 2!" The easiest way to do that for some time has been the chrome dev tools.
- ajamesm 10y ago
  A JS REPL is definitely faster for zero to Hello World... how about to standing up a toy blog on a local stack? What's the comparative effort vs. PHP?

plurinshael 10y ago

Well spoken. When I hear people belittling others, no matter how "good" the reason, I think damn, have some respect. And also just, have some dignity. If you really want to influence someone's behavior, engage them, ask them honest questions, accept them. If you do not want to influence their behavior, leave them alone. Do not drag your own heart through mockery and judgment and scorn because it was done to you, or because others will find it funny. Those marks on your heart will be visible to all, and truly, you will feel them in your dark hours. "When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready."

smacktoward 10y ago
The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao.

Allower 10y ago

AH YES, childish people are childish. how enlightening

ixtli 10y ago

I have always thought that one of JavaScript (or at least the community's) best assets is the fact that no one defends it as "the best" or "the next big thing." Everyone embraces discussing its faults or mocking poorly written JS and admitting that it happens a lot. I think this allows the community to be honest when teaching people how to avoid its pitfalls and puts the spotlight on frameworks and libraries that encourage good patterns.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

michaelfeathers 10y ago

I think the real problem is being able to distinguish between criticism of a language and criticism of the people using it. The former is ok, the latter isn't. If we take a criticism of a technology we use as criticism of us, it's a rather unhealthy state to be in. Technologies come and go. They aren't something we should immerse our identity in.

Roboprog 10y ago

Perhaps some of the contempt is due to suffering at the hands of management who insists that there is one golden hammer (language) that must be used for all problems. Not being able to switch tools for different tasks is a source of frustration, and this frustration WILL find a vent :-)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dang 10y ago

When I reach the "Shut. Up." section the article feels more like a re-expression of its subject than an overcoming. These tendencies are harder to overcome than they seem. They're slippery, and there's good in them as well as bad.