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There's a weird phenomenon I've seen in a few domains of prideful ignorance. Backend engineers who proudly don't know how to write frontend code and vice versa
by CSMastermind 4y ago
There's a weird phenomenon I've seen in a few domains of prideful ignorance.
Backend engineers who proudly don't know how to write frontend code and vice versa. Professional engineers who refuse to learn how to use modern IDEs and monitoring platforms. People who don't know how to quickly prototype software as if building something without complete rigor is beneath them. People who refuse to learn or work in certain programming languages they deem inferior.
And rather than seeing this as a gap in their own skillset they think of it as a mark of intelligence or moral superiority.
I suspect we'll see another divide around AI assisted coding with some engineers simply refusing to learn how to use the tools effectively to make themselves more productive as a point of pride.
- sgu999 4y agoIn my (small) experience I've seen that only once, a perfect specimen who fits your description. Unfortunately this person was acting-CTO of a startup. They decided that for a consumer product very close to what a smartphone can do, they didn't need an OS. So they started writing their build system with make only, then an OS, an IP stack, then a GUI, then added support for multithreading,... Of course Android existed, that was the end of the 2010s. The retail price of a cheap (and faster!) Android phone was even lower than our BOM. 4 years and 20M later, the company went bankrupt without having delivered the product it promised, but they had fun writing their "superior" software. As long as people are in charge, we'll have plenty willing to pay technical workers who see themselves as artists.
- robinsonb5 4y agoThat sounds like a fantastic hobby project - but being able to tell the difference between a hobby project and a viable product in the marketplace is... maybe something AI can help with!? :P
- postsantum 4y agoThis could be Terry Davis if he hadn't had a mental illness
- wiseowise 4y agoTerry actually delivered product.
- wiseowise 4y ago> I suspect we'll see another divide around AI assisted coding with some engineers simply refusing to learn how to use the tools effectively to make themselves more productive as a point of pride. They will naturally fall behind their colleagues.
- debesyla 4y ago> Professional engineers who refuse to learn how to use modern IDEs In my experience - I ignore the modern IDEs and systems purely because I don't have time to learn every new tool... :-D
- bjornsing 4y agoAs an engineering manager I’m usually more concerned with those engineers that tend to spend all their time fiddling with IDEs etc, so that they will some day (that never comes) be soooo productive.
- awestroke 4y agoIf you were my manager I'd quit immediately, and I'm a top performer.
- latency-guy2 4y agoDon't worry, you're fired.
- mrits 4y agoWhat is a modern IDE? It seems like the more recent trend has moved away from bloated IDEs and more to a bring your editor and own plugins environment. From my perspective IDEs lost and things are now closer to how Vim users have been coding for decades.
- krab 4y agoIt doesn't seem so to me. With LSP, those editors, including Vim, can be very large and featureful. A modern (or any) IDE, in my opinion, can debug your code, push parts of the editor into REPL (with debugging), understand code for things like autocomplete, linting, quick navigation and usage search. And yes, Vim can serve as a modern IDE if you spend enough time with it.
- mrits 4y agoIt seems like you start out by disagreeing and then just give a summary of why you don't need an IDE.
- krab 4y agoI'm saying the trend (IMHO) is not away from a full blown IDE and that smaller editors with plugins and LSP can fill the the role as well, including the resource consumption. Vim can be very slow with a ton of plugins.
- mrits 4y agoThey not only can fill the role, they do fill it, and have been for longer and better than IDEs.
- joseph8th 4y agoEmacs. :)