8 ms·

I'd consider myself to be one of these developers. I don't blog, I don't Tweet, and my public GH contributions are sparse at best. I'm a fairly senior engineer

by wrren 3y ago

I'd consider myself to be one of these developers. I don't blog, I don't Tweet, and my public GH contributions are sparse at best. I'm a fairly senior engineer in a large company. What bothers me about this post is the idea that I must be lagging behind on using the newest technologies just because I don't Tweet about it? Conferences, in my experience, are mostly a waste of time. I can usually watch the keynotes online after the fact if I care to. I'm not interested in joining discussion groups and posting; like the vast majority of people, I'm content to lurk, but I'm not blind! So yeah, I'd be very comfortable challenging a light-visible developer on pushing/using new technology and generally being aware of the landscape. I just don't care to talk about it constantly.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Even the idea that new tech is somehow worth our time and attention because it is new is extremely presumptuous. It disrespects my time by trading it for the cheap fashion and marketing of industry.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ricardobeat 3y ago
I think being up to date on new technology puts you clearly not in the “dark matter” camp he’s talking about. There is a lot of development happening in ASP.net, C, Cobol and platforms that have been stable for decades. [had an extended comment here before but got downvoted by what I can only imagine are people offended by the word “lagging”. Reminder that downvotes on HN are for comments breaking etiquette, not to show disagreement]
coldtea 3y ago
>What bothers me about this post is the idea that I must be lagging behind on using the newest technologies Is that an accussation though, or a compliment? "Newest technologies" are for early adopters and hype suckers. Engineers use proven technologies, not just "newer" for the sake of it.
- pc86 3y ago
  Engineers also fall victim to hype from time to time, because engineers are human. It's part of an engineering mindset to trust proven technology, but it's also part of an engineering mindset to make sure you're staying up-to-date with critical changes in your field. Ignoring either for long enough will make you a worse engineer.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Engineers also fall victim to hype from time to time, because engineers are human. Sure, just like everybody has shat themselves one time or another, at the very least as a toddler, but perhaps also when they had to make a long run to a remote bathroom after Taco Bell. But there are really people suffering from severe diarrhoea too, and those are two distinct groups. It's not that engineers are immune to hype. It's that the others are hype-magnets and hype-spreaders.
    - pc86 3y ago
      Doesn't this imply that "hype-magnets" and "hype-spreaders" ("the others") aren't engineers, or couldn't be? Engineers aren't some special class of human with special brains or pseudo-Vulcan logic that makes it impossible for us to be just as hype-spreading as anyone else.
- ironmagma 3y ago
  The problem with your model is that it relies on there being “proven” technologies to begin with, but who is going to prove them if not those very groups you deride? You’re proving the necessity of the early adopters and hype suckers if anything.
  - KronisLV 3y ago
    Couldn't one make the point that those early adopters in orgs that can afford to take on the risks pave the way for everyone else? And eventually, once some technologies survive and others die off for a variety of reasons, people with deadlines to meet (more limited amount of time and resources to invest in getting something working) can just build off of the success of others?
joenot443 3y ago
I think the fact you’re commenting here at all, sharing your thoughts and choosing to make yourself heard, sort of excludes you from the silent dark matter group, no? It’s no shining badge of merit, but I do think that being on HN at all, choosing to spend our time learning and conversing about our career field, is a fairly strong group-signal in and of itself. I’ve worked at tiny startups all the way to big tech and immediately had a few people come to mind when I read the description. A lot of them were really into sports or the arts or had a busy family, often this meant that outside of the function of our very specific role, they never really had much to say about tech or programming. That’s a really good thing though! I think it’s a drag spending all day with people whose interests are too similar to mine, it gets really stale. I’d much rather hear about how Dan’s hockey team’s doing than yet another debate about LLMs :)
- jq-r 3y ago
  > I think the fact you’re commenting here at all, sharing your thoughts and choosing to make yourself heard, sort of excludes you from the silent dark matter group, no? Come now, if your definition is so strict then nobody is in that group. Its a very far cry from youtubers/guest speakers etc.
  - bgirard 3y ago
    Agreed. This is the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There are degrees of everything but I'm sure there is a non-trivial subset of developers/engineers who don't blog/write, post on social media professionally, attend conferences. Maybe a lot of them are just 99% dark because they posted on HN a few times. But you might be surprised at how many people are nearly invisible on the web--and certainly professionally.
- solarmist 3y ago
  The difference is having a publicly identifiable presence. If you keep your real identity mostly hidden then you are in the dark matter group.
pjc50 3y ago
An underappreciated aspect of all this: how many people are under NDA? There's no upside to me talking about my current work and I might accidentally breach NDA, so I don't. I feel I can give detail-stripped war stories from previous jobs, though. (Working on WinCE was very much being a "dark matter" developer, because there's almost no user community at all. And a good example of the NDA problem: you get some of the source to Windows CE, which you can't really discuss in public because it's copyright Microsoft)
- dmd 3y ago
  I worked for 3 years at Ab Initio, a software company with an ETL product which is - honestly - phenomenally good and worlds above anything else in the space, open source or not. (It was designed and is still mostly developed by graybeard former Symbolics and Thinking Machines Corp. hackers.) And I never blogged or spoke a word about it, because it's absolutely forbidden both by rule and by company culture.
  - oaiey 3y ago
    They should rethink their marketing ;)
    - dmd 3y ago
      Given they make money hand over fist... I think they're doing just fine with their current strategy. I obviously can't give details, but they basically print money.
      - oaiey 3y ago
        This always amazes me. I see so many product web pages and they barely tell you what the product is but often there are very good products behind it
- ghaff 3y ago
  Or they have security clearances etc. I'm sure I know quite a few people who go "Hmm. My employer doesn't even really want us posting on social media so on the one hand maybe I can earn a few Internet points. On the other hand, I could get fired. Tough call. (Not.)"
serjester 3y ago
While I’m not in this group since I have a hard time detaching from work, I think Anthony Bourdain summed this up well. “I'll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear 'artist', I think of someone who doesn't think it necessary to show up at work on time. More often than not their efforts, convinced as they are of their own genius, are geared more to giving themselves a hard-on than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers. Personally, I'd prefer to eat food that tastes good and is an honest reflection of its ingredients, than a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry.”
- idiocratic 3y ago
  Great quote. It applies to pretty much any profession that isn't pure art. Knowing how it works in medical and research fields, it would be a great analogy for that too.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  good luck developing new dishes without artists. Maybe you don't want a "a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry" but A) that sounds fucking delicious to me and B) in the same way that fashion houses present ideas that are then digested and disseminated into consumer clothing lines, culinary artists also provide an essential service in pushing the art of food forward. that's such an unnecessarily disparaging remark that I kind of don't even know how to take it (or him) seriously.
  - snapcaster 3y ago
    I think you focused too much on that part. The overall point (artists are self absorbed and unprofessional) is really hard to argue against to anyone who has spent any time out in the world
    - mwigdahl 3y ago
      And you don't even need to go that far. Bourdain is talking in the context of running a successful restaurant -- serving quality food to customers that they want, on time. The artist can be everything GP said they were and still be inferior to the mercenary in that context.
oaiey 3y ago
Scott should indeed rewrite that article one day (HN: shanselman ... do you read ;)). You are right with this statement. These are two different things which often correlate but not necessarily.
908B64B197 3y ago
> Conferences, in my experience, are mostly a waste of time. I can usually watch the keynotes online after the fact if I care to. I'm not interested in joining discussion groups and posting; like the vast majority of people, I'm content to lurk, but I'm not blind! They are great for recruiting.
- ghaff 3y ago
  And hallway track if you're into that sort of thing (which I am). I do think that, especially with the increase in video we've seen over the past few years, if you're going to conferences to sit in keynotes and breakouts and then head back to your room, they're probably a waste of time and money for you.
Vaderv 3y ago
[dead]
MonaroVXR 3y ago
Can I counter? I applied to some jobs and they didn't see anything and I got shot every time. So right now, I publish a lot more, I do this for myself, so not everybody can see me. My hypothesis, people change the rules a lot and when things start to fall apart the rules. So right now, when I see nothing, there's a big chance that I don't going to this person serious.

by wrren 3y ago

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

Even the idea that new tech is somehow worth our time and attention because it is new is extremely presumptuous. It disrespects my time by trading it for the cheap fashion and marketing of industry.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ricardobeat 3y ago

I think being up to date on new technology puts you clearly not in the “dark matter” camp he’s talking about. There is a lot of development happening in ASP.net, C, Cobol and platforms that have been stable for decades. [had an extended comment here before but got downvoted by what I can only imagine are people offended by the word “lagging”. Reminder that downvotes on HN are for comments breaking etiquette, not to show disagreement]

coldtea 3y ago

>What bothers me about this post is the idea that I must be lagging behind on using the newest technologies Is that an accussation though, or a compliment? "Newest technologies" are for early adopters and hype suckers. Engineers use proven technologies, not just "newer" for the sake of it.

pc86 3y ago
Engineers also fall victim to hype from time to time, because engineers are human. It's part of an engineering mindset to trust proven technology, but it's also part of an engineering mindset to make sure you're staying up-to-date with critical changes in your field. Ignoring either for long enough will make you a worse engineer.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Engineers also fall victim to hype from time to time, because engineers are human. Sure, just like everybody has shat themselves one time or another, at the very least as a toddler, but perhaps also when they had to make a long run to a remote bathroom after Taco Bell. But there are really people suffering from severe diarrhoea too, and those are two distinct groups. It's not that engineers are immune to hype. It's that the others are hype-magnets and hype-spreaders.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Doesn't this imply that "hype-magnets" and "hype-spreaders" ("the others") aren't engineers, or couldn't be? Engineers aren't some special class of human with special brains or pseudo-Vulcan logic that makes it impossible for us to be just as hype-spreading as anyone else.
ironmagma 3y ago
The problem with your model is that it relies on there being “proven” technologies to begin with, but who is going to prove them if not those very groups you deride? You’re proving the necessity of the early adopters and hype suckers if anything.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  Couldn't one make the point that those early adopters in orgs that can afford to take on the risks pave the way for everyone else? And eventually, once some technologies survive and others die off for a variety of reasons, people with deadlines to meet (more limited amount of time and resources to invest in getting something working) can just build off of the success of others?

joenot443 3y ago

I think the fact you’re commenting here at all, sharing your thoughts and choosing to make yourself heard, sort of excludes you from the silent dark matter group, no? It’s no shining badge of merit, but I do think that being on HN at all, choosing to spend our time learning and conversing about our career field, is a fairly strong group-signal in and of itself. I’ve worked at tiny startups all the way to big tech and immediately had a few people come to mind when I read the description. A lot of them were really into sports or the arts or had a busy family, often this meant that outside of the function of our very specific role, they never really had much to say about tech or programming. That’s a really good thing though! I think it’s a drag spending all day with people whose interests are too similar to mine, it gets really stale. I’d much rather hear about how Dan’s hockey team’s doing than yet another debate about LLMs :)

jq-r 3y ago
> I think the fact you’re commenting here at all, sharing your thoughts and choosing to make yourself heard, sort of excludes you from the silent dark matter group, no? Come now, if your definition is so strict then nobody is in that group. Its a very far cry from youtubers/guest speakers etc.
- bgirard 3y ago
  Agreed. This is the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are degrees of everything but I'm sure there is a non-trivial subset of developers/engineers who don't blog/write, post on social media professionally, attend conferences. Maybe a lot of them are just 99% dark because they posted on HN a few times. But you might be surprised at how many people are nearly invisible on the web--and certainly professionally.
solarmist 3y ago
The difference is having a publicly identifiable presence. If you keep your real identity mostly hidden then you are in the dark matter group.

pjc50 3y ago

An underappreciated aspect of all this: how many people are under NDA? There's no upside to me talking about my current work and I might accidentally breach NDA, so I don't. I feel I can give detail-stripped war stories from previous jobs, though. (Working on WinCE was very much being a "dark matter" developer, because there's almost no user community at all. And a good example of the NDA problem: you get some of the source to Windows CE, which you can't really discuss in public because it's copyright Microsoft)

dmd 3y ago
I worked for 3 years at Ab Initio, a software company with an ETL product which is - honestly - phenomenally good and worlds above anything else in the space, open source or not. (It was designed and is still mostly developed by graybeard former Symbolics and Thinking Machines Corp. hackers.) And I never blogged or spoke a word about it, because it's absolutely forbidden both by rule and by company culture.
- oaiey 3y ago
  They should rethink their marketing ;)
  - dmd 3y ago
    Given they make money hand over fist... I think they're doing just fine with their current strategy. I obviously can't give details, but they basically print money.
    - oaiey 3y ago
      This always amazes me. I see so many product web pages and they barely tell you what the product is but often there are very good products behind it
ghaff 3y ago
Or they have security clearances etc. I'm sure I know quite a few people who go "Hmm. My employer doesn't even really want us posting on social media so on the one hand maybe I can earn a few Internet points. On the other hand, I could get fired. Tough call. (Not.)"

serjester 3y ago

While I’m not in this group since I have a hard time detaching from work, I think Anthony Bourdain summed this up well. “I'll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear 'artist', I think of someone who doesn't think it necessary to show up at work on time. More often than not their efforts, convinced as they are of their own genius, are geared more to giving themselves a hard-on than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers. Personally, I'd prefer to eat food that tastes good and is an honest reflection of its ingredients, than a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry.”

idiocratic 3y ago
Great quote. It applies to pretty much any profession that isn't pure art. Knowing how it works in medical and research fields, it would be a great analogy for that too.
mock-possum 3y ago
good luck developing new dishes without artists. Maybe you don't want a "a 3-foot-tall caprice constructed from lemon grass, lawn trimmings, coconuts and red curry" but A) that sounds fucking delicious to me and B) in the same way that fashion houses present ideas that are then digested and disseminated into consumer clothing lines, culinary artists also provide an essential service in pushing the art of food forward. that's such an unnecessarily disparaging remark that I kind of don't even know how to take it (or him) seriously.
- snapcaster 3y ago
  I think you focused too much on that part. The overall point (artists are self absorbed and unprofessional) is really hard to argue against to anyone who has spent any time out in the world
  - mwigdahl 3y ago
    And you don't even need to go that far. Bourdain is talking in the context of running a successful restaurant -- serving quality food to customers that they want, on time. The artist can be everything GP said they were and still be inferior to the mercenary in that context.

oaiey 3y ago

Scott should indeed rewrite that article one day (HN: shanselman ... do you read ;)). You are right with this statement. These are two different things which often correlate but not necessarily.

908B64B197 3y ago

> Conferences, in my experience, are mostly a waste of time. I can usually watch the keynotes online after the fact if I care to. I'm not interested in joining discussion groups and posting; like the vast majority of people, I'm content to lurk, but I'm not blind! They are great for recruiting.

ghaff 3y ago
And hallway track if you're into that sort of thing (which I am). I do think that, especially with the increase in video we've seen over the past few years, if you're going to conferences to sit in keynotes and breakouts and then head back to your room, they're probably a waste of time and money for you.

Vaderv 3y ago

[dead]

MonaroVXR 3y ago

Can I counter? I applied to some jobs and they didn't see anything and I got shot every time. So right now, I publish a lot more, I do this for myself, so not everybody can see me. My hypothesis, people change the rules a lot and when things start to fall apart the rules. So right now, when I see nothing, there's a big chance that I don't going to this person serious.