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> 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 t
by GavinMcG 10y ago
> 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.
Sure, but the sneering is totally unnecessary. Being great, and being vocal, and being critical – those are the things that get the job done in a constructive way. Why do we also need to cop an attitude that is unpleasant, socially undesirable more broadly, and aggressive towards people who could end up being valuable members of our preferred tribe?
- corysama 10y agoExactly. Tribalism is easy and effective, but in the long term it is destructive. It devolves rapidly into troll culture where the loudest voices are mostly parroting whatever aggressive message they've found gets the strongest reaction. Explaining the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches without falling back on derision takes a lot of effort -especially given that there will never be an end to newbies who haven't heard a good explanation. But, it's necessary to avoid teaching that tech should be evaluated by comparing the insults of the competing communities.