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I disagree. There's nothing interesting about pursuing frameworks and languages of the month. The highly talented, intelligent developers I know don't care ab

I disagree. There's nothing interesting about pursuing frameworks and languages of the month. The highly talented, intelligent developers I know don't care about that stuff - their actual work is way more interesting. I think what you're describing is average to slightly above average developers who are working on boring, already solved problems. So they have to find something to make it more interesting.

synu 4y ago
I agree the best teams have been more “keep it simple and focus on making cool stuff” than being focused on trying random new frameworks. But Scrum is not a popular choice for keeping it simple because it comes with a lot of baggage.
- stephenhuey 4y ago
  Scrum is pretty small. A lot of the threads on here are mentioning all sorts of Agile tools that Scrum does not require. Those extra things are optional if they help you but defined outside of Scrum (like planning poker). And if you dislike one of the few things in Scrum such as the end of sprint retrospective, you can take it out. So a lot of people think they’re doing Scrum when it’s really Scrum plus other stuff, and they think they hate Scrum. Experienced developers may not find it helps them all that much, but to me, the important other side of the coin is that when you try to teach the powers that be about Scrum, it helps educate them enough that they don’t mismanage the developers too much. To management, Scrum tries to say don’t come in and add requirements every other day during the sprint so the developers can at least have a few days of focus to actually ship some code. I’ve definitely seen overeager product owners come in and hover over developers more than is healthy for the project even AFTER being educated on how Scrum is being followed and they should pull back and give a little breathing room! If I had a nickel for every time management pulled people aside to tell them more stuff to build and then shortly after ask why something they asked for weeks ago isn’t done yet…………Scrum tries to give developers a way to communicate what needs to happen for them to ship! Maybe in some purely tech companies the folks in charge already get it and don’t get in the way so the developers can just have at it, but those are rare amidst all the types of businesses employing software developers.
hinkley 4y ago
There are lots of ways to make a project more interesting. These eager beavers don’t have a broad enough world view to channel that energy into other things. Some of which are maintenance neutral, others which are maintenance positive.
saiya-jin 4y ago
You are incorrect. In my 18 years in dev, I've seen quite a few of those fabled 10x or 100x devs, and oh boy they can deliver if unconstrained by processes and bureaucracy. Rest of the team then scrambles to figure out how things work once they move on to next cool thing. Always some cool new framework (or even better, one developed just for this situation because its fun). All of them, no exception, loved exploring another framework du jour (and java has/had tons of those) for each project. None of them were 'finishers' - ideal for them would be prototype something quickly, and then move on, daily project grind was universally hated. Few had to be treated like babies by managers - finding new topics hey can play with to maximize contribution to the project (which often paid off, ie once we got 10x throughput increase compared to default ActiveMQ installation, the guy did some proper debugging/perf testing only possible due to open source nature of the product... brilliant guy, but hardly a team player, complicated personality).
- pdimitar 4y ago
  I have no doubt such people exist, but you're generalizing needlessly. I've met plenty of senior devs that stick to target and idolize maintainability. No point in insisting that your anecdotal evidence is universal (by asserting "you're incorrect").
  - ABCLAW 4y ago
    Isn't the post he's replying to doing the exact same thing?
    - pdimitar 4y ago
      Maybe it does, I'd still disagree that's its main point however. Obviously claiming extremes is always wrong. But I'd still wager that most people who are indeed senior devs -- myself included -- are long past the "let's try this new thing because reasons!" thing.

synu 4y ago

I agree the best teams have been more “keep it simple and focus on making cool stuff” than being focused on trying random new frameworks. But Scrum is not a popular choice for keeping it simple because it comes with a lot of baggage.

stephenhuey 4y ago
Scrum is pretty small. A lot of the threads on here are mentioning all sorts of Agile tools that Scrum does not require. Those extra things are optional if they help you but defined outside of Scrum (like planning poker). And if you dislike one of the few things in Scrum such as the end of sprint retrospective, you can take it out. So a lot of people think they’re doing Scrum when it’s really Scrum plus other stuff, and they think they hate Scrum. Experienced developers may not find it helps them all that much, but to me, the important other side of the coin is that when you try to teach the powers that be about Scrum, it helps educate them enough that they don’t mismanage the developers too much. To management, Scrum tries to say don’t come in and add requirements every other day during the sprint so the developers can at least have a few days of focus to actually ship some code. I’ve definitely seen overeager product owners come in and hover over developers more than is healthy for the project even AFTER being educated on how Scrum is being followed and they should pull back and give a little breathing room! If I had a nickel for every time management pulled people aside to tell them more stuff to build and then shortly after ask why something they asked for weeks ago isn’t done yet…………Scrum tries to give developers a way to communicate what needs to happen for them to ship! Maybe in some purely tech companies the folks in charge already get it and don’t get in the way so the developers can just have at it, but those are rare amidst all the types of businesses employing software developers.

hinkley 4y ago

There are lots of ways to make a project more interesting. These eager beavers don’t have a broad enough world view to channel that energy into other things. Some of which are maintenance neutral, others which are maintenance positive.

saiya-jin 4y ago

You are incorrect. In my 18 years in dev, I've seen quite a few of those fabled 10x or 100x devs, and oh boy they can deliver if unconstrained by processes and bureaucracy. Rest of the team then scrambles to figure out how things work once they move on to next cool thing. Always some cool new framework (or even better, one developed just for this situation because its fun). All of them, no exception, loved exploring another framework du jour (and java has/had tons of those) for each project. None of them were 'finishers' - ideal for them would be prototype something quickly, and then move on, daily project grind was universally hated. Few had to be treated like babies by managers - finding new topics hey can play with to maximize contribution to the project (which often paid off, ie once we got 10x throughput increase compared to default ActiveMQ installation, the guy did some proper debugging/perf testing only possible due to open source nature of the product... brilliant guy, but hardly a team player, complicated personality).

pdimitar 4y ago
I have no doubt such people exist, but you're generalizing needlessly. I've met plenty of senior devs that stick to target and idolize maintainability. No point in insisting that your anecdotal evidence is universal (by asserting "you're incorrect").
- ABCLAW 4y ago
  Isn't the post he's replying to doing the exact same thing?
  - pdimitar 4y ago
    Maybe it does, I'd still disagree that's its main point however. Obviously claiming extremes is always wrong. But I'd still wager that most people who are indeed senior devs -- myself included -- are long past the "let's try this new thing because reasons!" thing.