4 ms·

> Most of the issues you've described have nothing to do with the "mythical man-nonth thinking" Hence the "Besides..." > And the talent pool at the level of a

by lapcat 3y ago

> Most of the issues you've described have nothing to do with the "mythical man-nonth thinking" Hence the "Besides..." > And the talent pool at the level of a single company is practically infinite unless you indeed introduce artificial constraints like not wanting to pay to tap into that wide pool I just explained how that's untrue, and it feels like you completely ignored what I said. You can't just say that Apple is "a single company" like any other company. Apple is the largest platform vendor in the world. How many other single companies have platforms like iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and now VisionOS? How many other single companies have effectively two bespoke programming languages, Swift and Objective-C, much less one? Perhaps only Google and Microsoft are comparable in their massive need for platform docs.

eviks 3y ago
>You can't just say that Apple is "a single company" like any other company. Apple is the largest platform vendor in the world. The world is HUUUUGE (even limiting by language), so not only can I say "a single company", I can raise it to the level of "a single tiny company", especially when it comes to such a small scale issue > How many other single companies have platforms ... bespoke programming languages How does it matter? There are gazillions of educated people in the world with all the skills for a couple of order of magnitudes more languages than just 2! And it's especially preposterous making this arguments after waves of layoffs in the tech sector And you can't reject a simple solution "just pay more" with "companies don't value doc writers": that explains why they don't hire enough people/don't care about the quality of their output, not that there are some inherent talent pool limitations
- lapcat 3y ago
  > How does it matter? There are gazillions of educated people in the world with all the skills for a couple of order of magnitudes more languages than just 2! And it's especially preposterous making this arguments after waves of layoffs in the tech sector I already explained how it matters: "The minimum qualifications for a good API doc writer is practical experience programming with the technology to be documented. That already narrows the field significantly." You seem to think that it's just a trivial skill: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914104 But when you look at the Apple documentation archive, and the extensive, excellent conceptual articles, it's clear that this accomplishment required a lot of care, experience, and skill.
  - eviks 3y ago
    You haven't explained it since it doesn't follow. The fact that a single company uses many technologies has no effect in itself on the pool of people using those technologies. Besides, that's another misapplied requirement of yours: experience can be gained, it will take longer, but it's just another "takes more resources" issue, not something that narrows the field since for some reason you added that requirement before hiring, not before writing docs. I don't think it's a trivial (that's your straw man), I just disagree that it requires rare man of mythical set of skills to accomplish to make it justifiably hard for poor Apple

by lapcat 3y ago

eviks 3y ago

>You can't just say that Apple is "a single company" like any other company. Apple is the largest platform vendor in the world. The world is HUUUUGE (even limiting by language), so not only can I say "a single company", I can raise it to the level of "a single tiny company", especially when it comes to such a small scale issue > How many other single companies have platforms ... bespoke programming languages How does it matter? There are gazillions of educated people in the world with all the skills for a couple of order of magnitudes more languages than just 2! And it's especially preposterous making this arguments after waves of layoffs in the tech sector And you can't reject a simple solution "just pay more" with "companies don't value doc writers": that explains why they don't hire enough people/don't care about the quality of their output, not that there are some inherent talent pool limitations

lapcat 3y ago
> How does it matter? There are gazillions of educated people in the world with all the skills for a couple of order of magnitudes more languages than just 2! And it's especially preposterous making this arguments after waves of layoffs in the tech sector I already explained how it matters: "The minimum qualifications for a good API doc writer is practical experience programming with the technology to be documented. That already narrows the field significantly." You seem to think that it's just a trivial skill: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914104 But when you look at the Apple documentation archive, and the extensive, excellent conceptual articles, it's clear that this accomplishment required a lot of care, experience, and skill.
- eviks 3y ago
  You haven't explained it since it doesn't follow. The fact that a single company uses many technologies has no effect in itself on the pool of people using those technologies. Besides, that's another misapplied requirement of yours: experience can be gained, it will take longer, but it's just another "takes more resources" issue, not something that narrows the field since for some reason you added that requirement before hiring, not before writing docs. I don't think it's a trivial (that's your straw man), I just disagree that it requires rare man of mythical set of skills to accomplish to make it justifiably hard for poor Apple