3 ms·

>Customers tend to get in the way of good code Wow, everything wrong with the tech industry right here.

by reedwolf 7y ago

paulannesley 7y ago
"The tech industry"; maybe. "Hacker culture"; no.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ljw1001 7y ago
Not even close to everything wrong in the tech industry
tripzilch 7y ago
They're not wrong, but neither are you. As a programmer who doesn't write for customers, I'll say, yeah it's sometimes true. But if I were in the business of writing software for customers, I would word that very differently. The issue described is a challenge in said industry, and being good at navigating that problem is a quality that separates the great from the mediocre. Describing that as "getting in the way" ignores the skill and pride in taking on that challenge. Actually I'm not even sure. I have a little experience with freelance web development around 2007 (browser war veteran), and I found navigating between customers expectations and "good code" to not be hard at all. I did read a lot of blogs on webdev (including the business side of it, contracts and expectation management, etc) so I probably got some great advice somewhere[0]. Reading about it actually got me more enthusiastic about tackling the problem as well as I could. But usually the details that made it good code or not were technical details that I didn't bother them with. Or they were things I could sell; browser compatibility and accessibility (back then I could use the line "Google is your most important blind user" -- now no longer true). Of course I am aware that as a freelancer, I enjoyed a lot of freedoms that you don't always get as a programmer-for-customers in different business environments. But if that's the case, that really proves it's not the customers that get in the way, but the institution. [0] I kinda miss the ... blogosphere.

3 ms·

>Customers tend to get in the way of good code Wow, everything wrong with the tech industry right here.

by reedwolf 7y ago

>Customers tend to get in the way of good code Wow, everything wrong with the tech industry right here.

paulannesley 7y ago
"The tech industry"; maybe. "Hacker culture"; no.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ljw1001 7y ago
Not even close to everything wrong in the tech industry
tripzilch 7y ago
They're not wrong, but neither are you. As a programmer who doesn't write for customers, I'll say, yeah it's sometimes true. But if I were in the business of writing software for customers, I would word that very differently. The issue described is a challenge in said industry, and being good at navigating that problem is a quality that separates the great from the mediocre. Describing that as "getting in the way" ignores the skill and pride in taking on that challenge. Actually I'm not even sure. I have a little experience with freelance web development around 2007 (browser war veteran), and I found navigating between customers expectations and "good code" to not be hard at all. I did read a lot of blogs on webdev (including the business side of it, contracts and expectation management, etc) so I probably got some great advice somewhere[0]. Reading about it actually got me more enthusiastic about tackling the problem as well as I could. But usually the details that made it good code or not were technical details that I didn't bother them with. Or they were things I could sell; browser compatibility and accessibility (back then I could use the line "Google is your most important blind user" -- now no longer true). Of course I am aware that as a freelancer, I enjoyed a lot of freedoms that you don't always get as a programmer-for-customers in different business environments. But if that's the case, that really proves it's not the customers that get in the way, but the institution. [0] I kinda miss the ... blogosphere.