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We work in an industry where senior developers don't know the difference between git and Github. The same seniors don't know the difference between Github actio

We work in an industry where senior developers don't know the difference between git and Github. The same seniors don't know the difference between Github actions, Travis CI and have never heard of Jenkins. Hardly anyone cares. Are you going to sell this to a startup? I doubt it. Are you going to sell it to a smb or enterprise company? Maybe. Is there a market to make cash there? Sure. Is it what I would want to make and try selling? Hell no.

prpl 3y ago
Enterprise is moving to bazel or similar, often with build caches, and using partial builds on checkin based on what’s changed.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  really depends on the enterprise. I know of quite a few that have buyers remorse over Bazel because they ended up having to have dedicated engineers to keep it working. There's alot of room for easier to manage Bazel alternatives and I believe enterprises are willing to pay for them.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  Enterprises with strong, opinionated, tech org leadership, maybe. The rest are shuffling around between solutions that haven’t been state-of-the-art in 15 years or more, and usually purchased or bundled from some giant vendor or another, as usual. They’re ahead of the curve if they have any standard widely-implemented CI solution that’s fully in use and not one of three (or more) in various stages of being adopted, maintained, and phased out, in fact.
bluGill 3y ago
Why should senior devs know that? Someone needs to know those differences, but on a large enterprise project you have a team that keeps the CI system working. The rest need to know how to checkin a file and how to check the CI output. They shouldn't care about those details. I expect any senior developer CAN learn the above things. However that doesn't mean they are worth knowing.
- cyberpunk 3y ago
  Just to be clear, your question is: why should a senior developer -- whose job ultimately involves managing a complex set of text files -- understand basic concepts behind the industry standard tooling for managing ... text files? Complete waste of time, they should be out playing golf with a board member instead, right..
  - bluGill 3y ago
    They need as much as a junior to get the job done. Then they should focus on the hard problems many of which are not tooling related. However if a different team has made a good ci system they don't need to know how it works, just enough to diagnose a build error they didn't see locally. Likewise, someone needs to know the details of git, but there is no need for everyone to know the details of that mess (git is a particularly bad version control, I wish the world had settled on something else - there are several better choices) so long as you can do the basic commits, merges and checkouts. Most senior developers need to know how to add a text file to cmake (or whatever your build system is), but there is a lot more you can do with a build system that only a few need to know. Senior devs need to be great at the problem domain they are in. That is normally the subsystem they write code in, and good architecture therein. They need to be able to figure out all the tools you list and more, but becoming experts in them all is a waste of time if enough others already are.
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    > they should be out playing golf with a board member instead As a senior developer myself, I approve this message!
- Tokumei-no-hito 3y ago
  I mean sure but not knowing the difference between git and GitHub is pretty egregious for any senior.

prpl 3y ago

Enterprise is moving to bazel or similar, often with build caches, and using partial builds on checkin based on what’s changed.

no_wizard 3y ago
really depends on the enterprise. I know of quite a few that have buyers remorse over Bazel because they ended up having to have dedicated engineers to keep it working. There's alot of room for easier to manage Bazel alternatives and I believe enterprises are willing to pay for them.
hotnfresh 3y ago
Enterprises with strong, opinionated, tech org leadership, maybe. The rest are shuffling around between solutions that haven’t been state-of-the-art in 15 years or more, and usually purchased or bundled from some giant vendor or another, as usual. They’re ahead of the curve if they have any standard widely-implemented CI solution that’s fully in use and not one of three (or more) in various stages of being adopted, maintained, and phased out, in fact.

bluGill 3y ago

Why should senior devs know that? Someone needs to know those differences, but on a large enterprise project you have a team that keeps the CI system working. The rest need to know how to checkin a file and how to check the CI output. They shouldn't care about those details. I expect any senior developer CAN learn the above things. However that doesn't mean they are worth knowing.

cyberpunk 3y ago
Just to be clear, your question is: why should a senior developer -- whose job ultimately involves managing a complex set of text files -- understand basic concepts behind the industry standard tooling for managing ... text files? Complete waste of time, they should be out playing golf with a board member instead, right..
- bluGill 3y ago
  They need as much as a junior to get the job done. Then they should focus on the hard problems many of which are not tooling related. However if a different team has made a good ci system they don't need to know how it works, just enough to diagnose a build error they didn't see locally. Likewise, someone needs to know the details of git, but there is no need for everyone to know the details of that mess (git is a particularly bad version control, I wish the world had settled on something else - there are several better choices) so long as you can do the basic commits, merges and checkouts. Most senior developers need to know how to add a text file to cmake (or whatever your build system is), but there is a lot more you can do with a build system that only a few need to know. Senior devs need to be great at the problem domain they are in. That is normally the subsystem they write code in, and good architecture therein. They need to be able to figure out all the tools you list and more, but becoming experts in them all is a waste of time if enough others already are.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  > they should be out playing golf with a board member instead As a senior developer myself, I approve this message!
Tokumei-no-hito 3y ago
I mean sure but not knowing the difference between git and GitHub is pretty egregious for any senior.