4 ms·

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers. There

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers. There are plenty of folks like Tom Christie, who has minimal social media following, but who built Django Rest Framework, which is used by tens of thousands of projects. The best developers are leaders, whether or not they're thought leaders.

jamestimmins 6y ago
Not to downplay the course developers and marketers. That's a valuable and difficult skill! It's just different than developing.
EdJiang 6y ago
I agree. I remember there was a bit of criticism in the iOS twitter community about iOS development influencers giving bad advice, because they haven't worked on meatier projects. Can't find much anymore but here's one example of a tweet: https://twitter.com/alex_v_bush/status/1277002102351499265 https://twitter.com/alex_v_bush/status/1277002102351499265
m463 6y ago
I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."
- ZinZirconium 6y ago
  Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: > I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else. And then RMS was railroaded out of the free software movement he started by the social extroverts who replaced all the introverts in tech. I'm an introvert. I'm a coder. I don't get paid to code. I do something else.
  - httpsterio 6y ago
    It your takeaway is that on the RMS debacle, then I find it rather sad. Without diminishing his achievements, the man is such a bad people person that he literally couldn't understand and respect other people's boundaries and sexually harassed several women. No matter how good of an activist or a movement leader you are, if you can't stop yourself from being a huge creep, you should not hold a position of power and work with other people. Ever.
    - ZinZirconium 6y ago
      RMS achieved precisely because he is a bad people person. He did what he believed needed to be done to reform the software industry the way he wanted it and he succeeded without regard for what other people thought of him. Unfortunately capitalists adapted to make tons of money exploiting the results of his life's work and social influencers influenced him out of society. And don't worry about me. I prefer to work alone and I'm in the process of getting banned from your fine forum right now for expressing unpopular opinions.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Yeah, he might be a deeply unpleasant person, and perhaps he shouldn't be a leader, but when the histories of the 20th century and the Internet are written, he'll have a starring place.
    - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
      >sexually harassed several women. Links please with specifics. Also is there reasonable evidence?
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    It's a bit sad that although coding tends to attract introverts, most SW development (especially in a work environment) fundamentally needs to be more social than other engineering disciplines. If you can find a job where you, and only you, are writing code, and not integrating it into a larger piece of SW, then everything is fine and you can work alone. This is incredibly rare. There is very little in SW that is clearly objective. How to architect the code well, rules about when to reuse code, when to abstract, whether to use a global variable, how to name things, even whether to use GOTO are all opinions - not facts. As such, the SW world has to put in a lot more effort in campaigning for what they consider good design and good coding practices. Look at code reviews. This is, at its very core, a social practice. In my experience, most of the discussions in code reviews do not involve bugs (which are very objective), but are dominated by style and design discussions, which are subjective. In most other engineering disciplines, things are a lot more clear cut. There usually are not 20 different ways to achieve something, and the criteria for quality is much clearer. I too am an introvert. But I also realize that complex SW development is at odds with introversion. I can lament the situation, but I cannot blame extroverts for this. They didn't come in and crowd things. It is inherent to the beast. As a SW developer, I do need to influence my fellow developers (as well as my customers). I have to learn those skills. One can do that while still being an introvert. (Not meaning to invalidate your point about RMS and organizations and social movements. I agree with you on that. But for SW development, some level of social skills legitimately gives you an advantage)
- scarface74 6y ago
  Woz would have been nowhere without Jobs. Jobs wouldn’t have succeeded when he came back without Schiller, Forstall, Cook, Fadell, etc.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Interesting perspective. I think the truth is they needed each other and the circumstances in which they excelled.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Wozniak didn’t do anything significant after Apple. Not meant to be a judgmental, once you almost die it kind of changes your priorities and just by founding Apple he has done more in his life than most. Jobs on the other hand, cofounded Apple, Next, and Pixar. The leaders at Next basically took over at Apple and the leaders at Pixar basically took over Disney’s animation division and ushered in a new era of animation. Jobs of course didn’t do it by himself (my whole point). But he had some type of talent with finding the right people and getting them to do their best work. Was that the RDF? I don’t know.
      - brailsafe 6y ago
        Seems to me like Woz has lived a fullfilling life doing basically what he's wanted to do. I don't see how that's not significant. My impression is that he never made his life's mission the ostensibly virtuous path of making commodity products for the masses. Not at Apple and not elsewhere. If I were to admire someone for how they lived their life, I'd probably choose Woz, not Jobs, because it almost seems laughably unhealthy to do otherwise.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Isn’t that exactly what I said? once you almost die it kind of changes your priorities and just by founding Apple he has done more in his life than most.
      - 6y ago

jamestimmins 6y ago

Not to downplay the course developers and marketers. That's a valuable and difficult skill! It's just different than developing.

EdJiang 6y ago

I agree. I remember there was a bit of criticism in the iOS twitter community about iOS development influencers giving bad advice, because they haven't worked on meatier projects. Can't find much anymore but here's one example of a tweet: https://twitter.com/alex_v_bush/status/1277002102351499265 https://twitter.com/alex_v_bush/status/1277002102351499265

m463 6y ago

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak. At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog. It was basically "work alone". EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

ZinZirconium 6y ago
Team players don't work alone. What has happened to all the introverts who work alone? They're not working in tech. Tech is for extroverts who get paid to copy from public GitHub repositories and paste into private GitHub repositories and sell proprietary products built upon code ripped from open source projects. But that's okay. Not everybody can be an extrovert who gets paid to pretend to code. RMS said it best: > I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else. And then RMS was railroaded out of the free software movement he started by the social extroverts who replaced all the introverts in tech. I'm an introvert. I'm a coder. I don't get paid to code. I do something else.
- httpsterio 6y ago
  It your takeaway is that on the RMS debacle, then I find it rather sad. Without diminishing his achievements, the man is such a bad people person that he literally couldn't understand and respect other people's boundaries and sexually harassed several women. No matter how good of an activist or a movement leader you are, if you can't stop yourself from being a huge creep, you should not hold a position of power and work with other people. Ever.
  - ZinZirconium 6y ago
    RMS achieved precisely because he is a bad people person. He did what he believed needed to be done to reform the software industry the way he wanted it and he succeeded without regard for what other people thought of him. Unfortunately capitalists adapted to make tons of money exploiting the results of his life's work and social influencers influenced him out of society. And don't worry about me. I prefer to work alone and I'm in the process of getting banned from your fine forum right now for expressing unpopular opinions.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, he might be a deeply unpleasant person, and perhaps he shouldn't be a leader, but when the histories of the 20th century and the Internet are written, he'll have a starring place.
  - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    >sexually harassed several women. Links please with specifics. Also is there reasonable evidence?
- BeetleB 6y ago
  It's a bit sad that although coding tends to attract introverts, most SW development (especially in a work environment) fundamentally needs to be more social than other engineering disciplines. If you can find a job where you, and only you, are writing code, and not integrating it into a larger piece of SW, then everything is fine and you can work alone. This is incredibly rare. There is very little in SW that is clearly objective. How to architect the code well, rules about when to reuse code, when to abstract, whether to use a global variable, how to name things, even whether to use GOTO are all opinions - not facts. As such, the SW world has to put in a lot more effort in campaigning for what they consider good design and good coding practices. Look at code reviews. This is, at its very core, a social practice. In my experience, most of the discussions in code reviews do not involve bugs (which are very objective), but are dominated by style and design discussions, which are subjective. In most other engineering disciplines, things are a lot more clear cut. There usually are not 20 different ways to achieve something, and the criteria for quality is much clearer. I too am an introvert. But I also realize that complex SW development is at odds with introversion. I can lament the situation, but I cannot blame extroverts for this. They didn't come in and crowd things. It is inherent to the beast. As a SW developer, I do need to influence my fellow developers (as well as my customers). I have to learn those skills. One can do that while still being an introvert. (Not meaning to invalidate your point about RMS and organizations and social movements. I agree with you on that. But for SW development, some level of social skills legitimately gives you an advantage)
scarface74 6y ago
Woz would have been nowhere without Jobs. Jobs wouldn’t have succeeded when he came back without Schiller, Forstall, Cook, Fadell, etc.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Interesting perspective. I think the truth is they needed each other and the circumstances in which they excelled.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Wozniak didn’t do anything significant after Apple. Not meant to be a judgmental, once you almost die it kind of changes your priorities and just by founding Apple he has done more in his life than most. Jobs on the other hand, cofounded Apple, Next, and Pixar. The leaders at Next basically took over at Apple and the leaders at Pixar basically took over Disney’s animation division and ushered in a new era of animation. Jobs of course didn’t do it by himself (my whole point). But he had some type of talent with finding the right people and getting them to do their best work. Was that the RDF? I don’t know.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Seems to me like Woz has lived a fullfilling life doing basically what he's wanted to do. I don't see how that's not significant. My impression is that he never made his life's mission the ostensibly virtuous path of making commodity products for the masses. Not at Apple and not elsewhere. If I were to admire someone for how they lived their life, I'd probably choose Woz, not Jobs, because it almost seems laughably unhealthy to do otherwise.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Isn’t that exactly what I said? once you almost die it kind of changes your priorities and just by founding Apple he has done more in his life than most.
    - 6y ago