4 ms·

I wish "crediting the people who wrote the software you're using" was not something that had to be hidden behind easter eggs. As far as I know, the only kind o

I wish "crediting the people who wrote the software you're using" was not something that had to be hidden behind easter eggs. As far as I know, the only kind of software that routinely does that is games ; and I suspect it is because games have an "ending", and the analogy works with plays and movies that have credits in the end. The software departments of any Marvel / Pixar flicks is probably bigger than most of the teams I worked with, and noone seems to be terrified to see their names printed after the generic bad guy with the blue skybeam is defeated... Open source projects have an AUTHORs.txt file ; would it really break the stability of the financial world if they had a `--credits` flag, too ?

nattaylor 5y ago
Photoshop loading screen used to do it I haven't used PS recently to know it is still does
- CharlesW 5y ago
  It does, with the "most important" people shown by default. If you hold Option (on macOS) while choosing "About Photoshop…", you'll get a scrolling movie-credits-type list that appears to show everyone who worked on the release.
- maxsilver 5y ago
  Photoshop 2022 still has a credit list on the splash screen. I don't know if that's everyone at Adobe on Photoshop or not, but there's 50-ish or more names on the splash screen at launch. - https://natashashaneek.com/adobe-photoshop-splash-screen-2022 https://natashashaneek.com/adobe-photoshop-splash-screen-202...
baud147258 5y ago
Jira (at least the version deployed in my current workplace, v8.14.1) has a credits button in the header.
- phtrivier 5y ago
  The hosted (*.atlassian.net) version does not seem to have it, though :/
stormbrew 5y ago
> As far as I know, the only kind of software that routinely does that is games This actually took some time to become the norm, with some really notorious incidents of companies that refused to let developers be credited in game. The Castlevania games, for eg, had fake horror movie-ish names in their credits. The developer credit in Adventure was an easter egg as well. Even Nintendo games had credits that were often full of pseudonyms.
lopis 5y ago
I think it's because games are often closer to art, and in the art world, crediting the creators is common.
13of40 5y ago
The explanation I heard for it (at Microsoft 20 years ago) was that listing your developers like that was a good way to get them poached by other companies. Crediting people by name is always a bit of a minefield anyway. Do test engineers and SRE get included? Everyone knows Jim is the alpha dev, so does his name come first or do you do it alphabetically? Etc.
- phtrivier 5y ago
  > The explanation I heard for it (at Microsoft 20 years ago) was that listing your developers like that was a good way to get them poached by other companies. I have to doubt the argument here. I was there 20 years ago, and the companies that wanted to recruit would just get the listing of all CS students for that year from university notebooks, and called them in a row. Why didn't MS forbid employees from being in their phone books or university facebooks ? > Do test engineers and SRE get included? Test engineers of a "shipped" product should obvioulsy get credited, yet. (I mean, movie credits have the name of cattering people ! You worked on it ? You get your name in the credits.) SREs is a much more interesting question ; since it's more of a "person keeping the lights on" thing than, "person who built the thing." Then again, whose business collapses if they get their name written somewhere ? So SAAS credits would be a "dynamic" thing, in a "credits" page that gets updated every so often. Pretty much like the credits of this week episode of any TV show is just every so slighly different that the previous weeks's one. > Everyone knows Jim is the alpha dev, so does his name come first or do you do it alphabetically Alphabetically. Yes. And if you really want to overthink it: alphabetically, organised by team / department / components / whatever, with the name of the "Head xxx" or "Xxx lead" first. Basically, the same way you publish the org chart of some levels of your company. Since Conway's law is the only law, your org charts and your products probably have the same structure anyway. Do companies ask people to hide the fact that they are "deputy-head-lead of quality synergies" on linkedin, in case they are poached ?
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    > Test engineers of a "shipped" product should obvioulsy get credited, yet. (I mean, movie credits have the name of cattering people ! You worked on it ? You get your name in the credits.) No particular deep knowledge here, but: my impression is this was a long and painful push by various unions and agents, with “top billing” becoming an actual thing to be negotiated as part of an actor’s contract, etc. Even having the end credits at all seems to be a workaround for accomodating the enormous number of people who insist on being credited: movies from the 30s seem to be perfectly content to just list the production company, the stars, and maybe the director at the start. Of course, it takes at most a couple generations of professionals to shift from “this is a thing won through hard negotiations” to “this is a thing that everybody is entitled to by common morality”, but my point is it didn’t (appear to) start that way, it had to be squeezed out from the execs over years. (Of course movies also don’t need maintenance or refactoring, at least not in the sense of requiring other actors and camera crews to come in.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mananaysiempre 5y ago
There are some reflections on that in view of the story of the original Macintosh on Folklore.org, in particular in “Credit where due”[1] (which seems to suggest this has been the original purpose of the About box—note GNOME still uses it that way) and “Signing party”[2] (which discusses the problem of drawing the line), see also “Steve icon”[3]. [1] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&/story=Credit_Where_Due.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&/sto... [2] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... [3] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
jandrese 5y ago
The business of making movies means that people in the industry are constantly having to find new work. Having their name advertised is probably helpful in landing a job on the next film. Software development is supposed to be a more steady career, so the need to constantly advertise yourself isn't as pressing. That said if you want to move up and get bigger paychecks it definitely helps to get your name out there.
sacrosancty 5y ago
But why? People who know those individuals can easily know what they did and they're just meaningless names to everyone else. Credits in movies are ridiculous. What even is a "best boy grip" and why does everyone need to know his name? With actors, it makes sense and the audience gets value from that. But do people have favorite best boy grips that put some special touch on the movie to make it better than all those others? Do you want names of engineers on physical products too? Brand names and compliance logos are bad enough.
- djkoolaide 5y ago
  For those like me who were curious, from the Wikipedia article[1]: According to the OED, "It has been suggested that it originated as a term for a master's most able apprentice, or alternatively that it was transferred from earlier use for a member of a ship's crew, but confirmatory evidence for either of these theories appears to be lacking." The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is 1931 from the Albuquerque Journal: "Among the electricians ... the department head is the gaffer, his first assistant is the best boy." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_boy
  - sacrosancty 5y ago
    Ah, so it's that. Audiences have no reason to care who does that job. It surely has no creative impact on the movie. It's just some weird culture of crediting everyone and his dog. A similar problem exists in academic papers. At least my builder doesn't write his name all over my walls.

nattaylor 5y ago

Photoshop loading screen used to do it I haven't used PS recently to know it is still does

CharlesW 5y ago
It does, with the "most important" people shown by default. If you hold Option (on macOS) while choosing "About Photoshop…", you'll get a scrolling movie-credits-type list that appears to show everyone who worked on the release.
maxsilver 5y ago
Photoshop 2022 still has a credit list on the splash screen. I don't know if that's everyone at Adobe on Photoshop or not, but there's 50-ish or more names on the splash screen at launch. - https://natashashaneek.com/adobe-photoshop-splash-screen-2022 https://natashashaneek.com/adobe-photoshop-splash-screen-202...

baud147258 5y ago

Jira (at least the version deployed in my current workplace, v8.14.1) has a credits button in the header.

phtrivier 5y ago
The hosted (*.atlassian.net) version does not seem to have it, though :/

stormbrew 5y ago

> As far as I know, the only kind of software that routinely does that is games This actually took some time to become the norm, with some really notorious incidents of companies that refused to let developers be credited in game. The Castlevania games, for eg, had fake horror movie-ish names in their credits. The developer credit in Adventure was an easter egg as well. Even Nintendo games had credits that were often full of pseudonyms.

lopis 5y ago

I think it's because games are often closer to art, and in the art world, crediting the creators is common.

13of40 5y ago

The explanation I heard for it (at Microsoft 20 years ago) was that listing your developers like that was a good way to get them poached by other companies. Crediting people by name is always a bit of a minefield anyway. Do test engineers and SRE get included? Everyone knows Jim is the alpha dev, so does his name come first or do you do it alphabetically? Etc.

phtrivier 5y ago
> The explanation I heard for it (at Microsoft 20 years ago) was that listing your developers like that was a good way to get them poached by other companies. I have to doubt the argument here. I was there 20 years ago, and the companies that wanted to recruit would just get the listing of all CS students for that year from university notebooks, and called them in a row. Why didn't MS forbid employees from being in their phone books or university facebooks ? > Do test engineers and SRE get included? Test engineers of a "shipped" product should obvioulsy get credited, yet. (I mean, movie credits have the name of cattering people ! You worked on it ? You get your name in the credits.) SREs is a much more interesting question ; since it's more of a "person keeping the lights on" thing than, "person who built the thing." Then again, whose business collapses if they get their name written somewhere ? So SAAS credits would be a "dynamic" thing, in a "credits" page that gets updated every so often. Pretty much like the credits of this week episode of any TV show is just every so slighly different that the previous weeks's one. > Everyone knows Jim is the alpha dev, so does his name come first or do you do it alphabetically Alphabetically. Yes. And if you really want to overthink it: alphabetically, organised by team / department / components / whatever, with the name of the "Head xxx" or "Xxx lead" first. Basically, the same way you publish the org chart of some levels of your company. Since Conway's law is the only law, your org charts and your products probably have the same structure anyway. Do companies ask people to hide the fact that they are "deputy-head-lead of quality synergies" on linkedin, in case they are poached ?
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  > Test engineers of a "shipped" product should obvioulsy get credited, yet. (I mean, movie credits have the name of cattering people ! You worked on it ? You get your name in the credits.) No particular deep knowledge here, but: my impression is this was a long and painful push by various unions and agents, with “top billing” becoming an actual thing to be negotiated as part of an actor’s contract, etc. Even having the end credits at all seems to be a workaround for accomodating the enormous number of people who insist on being credited: movies from the 30s seem to be perfectly content to just list the production company, the stars, and maybe the director at the start. Of course, it takes at most a couple generations of professionals to shift from “this is a thing won through hard negotiations” to “this is a thing that everybody is entitled to by common morality”, but my point is it didn’t (appear to) start that way, it had to be squeezed out from the execs over years. (Of course movies also don’t need maintenance or refactoring, at least not in the sense of requiring other actors and camera crews to come in.)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mananaysiempre 5y ago

There are some reflections on that in view of the story of the original Macintosh on Folklore.org, in particular in “Credit where due”[1] (which seems to suggest this has been the original purpose of the About box—note GNOME still uses it that way) and “Signing party”[2] (which discusses the problem of drawing the line), see also “Steve icon”[3]. [1] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&/story=Credit_Where_Due.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&/sto... [2] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... [3] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Steve,_Icon.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

jandrese 5y ago

The business of making movies means that people in the industry are constantly having to find new work. Having their name advertised is probably helpful in landing a job on the next film. Software development is supposed to be a more steady career, so the need to constantly advertise yourself isn't as pressing. That said if you want to move up and get bigger paychecks it definitely helps to get your name out there.

sacrosancty 5y ago

But why? People who know those individuals can easily know what they did and they're just meaningless names to everyone else. Credits in movies are ridiculous. What even is a "best boy grip" and why does everyone need to know his name? With actors, it makes sense and the audience gets value from that. But do people have favorite best boy grips that put some special touch on the movie to make it better than all those others? Do you want names of engineers on physical products too? Brand names and compliance logos are bad enough.

djkoolaide 5y ago
For those like me who were curious, from the Wikipedia article[1]: According to the OED, "It has been suggested that it originated as a term for a master's most able apprentice, or alternatively that it was transferred from earlier use for a member of a ship's crew, but confirmatory evidence for either of these theories appears to be lacking." The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is 1931 from the Albuquerque Journal: "Among the electricians ... the department head is the gaffer, his first assistant is the best boy." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_boy
- sacrosancty 5y ago
  Ah, so it's that. Audiences have no reason to care who does that job. It surely has no creative impact on the movie. It's just some weird culture of crediting everyone and his dog. A similar problem exists in academic papers. At least my builder doesn't write his name all over my walls.