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Meta but I really wish we could ban the phrase "cool kids" from the programming community. It has a terrible connotation (high school cliques). And it feels out

Meta but I really wish we could ban the phrase "cool kids" from the programming community. It has a terrible connotation (high school cliques). And it feels out of place, especially when we're talking about something like practical choices about what programming language and tooling we choose. Even when talking about "trendy" languages and frameworks it's a poor choice of words because no one really make these choices to be "cool" and it would actually be interesting to take time to better understand what drives adoption (which, to be fair, is what the speaker of this talk is actually doing with his real work, he just choices a grating title). To be cool people wear trendy clothes, listen to particular music, etc. with the intent of signaling to other "cool" people. People make choices about programming languages & tooling because they've heard something good about the language, it seems to solve a problem you have or it's new and presumably someone else thinks it solves an existing problem in the programming ecosystem.

glibgil 12y ago
gar1t is the guy that blew up "cool kids". He is doing better than banning the phrase. He is making it ridiculous. http://youtu.be/5GpOfwbFRcs?t=2m30s http://youtu.be/5GpOfwbFRcs?t=2m30s
unoti 12y ago
If you watch the video of the talk on vimeo below, the author addresses this issue head on at the start of his talk. The thesis is that there are many developers that use technologies for capricious reasons such as because other people do it, rather than for solid reasons of engineering. In my experience, huge swaths of the real world of software development are not wholly reasonable, objective, nor immune to groupthink. There's plenty of posturing and social signaling going on among developers.
- ritchiea 12y ago
  I'm definitely going to take time to watch his talk because the slides are excellent. And I agree with you wholeheartedly that the real world of software development is not wholly filled with reasonable people that strive for objectivity. Though in a serious conversation about technology adoption I'm not sure the best strategy is to target the unreasonable people. After all, are those even the people you want as advocates of your favorite technology? What you probably want is to win over the reasonable people and let the followers follow. Also, "other people do it" is not a capricious reason for adopting technology. It's not an engineering reason, but there are reasons to follow the crowd. If there is a crowd there will probably be lots of libraries, if there is a crowd there are more people that may do the thankless work of documenting and patching libraries, if there is a crowd there are more people to answer questions on stack overflow. The crowd may not be an engineering reason but it can definitely be a productivity reason.
deleted 12y ago
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glibgil 12y ago

gar1t is the guy that blew up "cool kids". He is doing better than banning the phrase. He is making it ridiculous. http://youtu.be/5GpOfwbFRcs?t=2m30s http://youtu.be/5GpOfwbFRcs?t=2m30s

unoti 12y ago

If you watch the video of the talk on vimeo below, the author addresses this issue head on at the start of his talk. The thesis is that there are many developers that use technologies for capricious reasons such as because other people do it, rather than for solid reasons of engineering. In my experience, huge swaths of the real world of software development are not wholly reasonable, objective, nor immune to groupthink. There's plenty of posturing and social signaling going on among developers.

ritchiea 12y ago
I'm definitely going to take time to watch his talk because the slides are excellent. And I agree with you wholeheartedly that the real world of software development is not wholly filled with reasonable people that strive for objectivity. Though in a serious conversation about technology adoption I'm not sure the best strategy is to target the unreasonable people. After all, are those even the people you want as advocates of your favorite technology? What you probably want is to win over the reasonable people and let the followers follow. Also, "other people do it" is not a capricious reason for adopting technology. It's not an engineering reason, but there are reasons to follow the crowd. If there is a crowd there will probably be lots of libraries, if there is a crowd there are more people that may do the thankless work of documenting and patching libraries, if there is a crowd there are more people to answer questions on stack overflow. The crowd may not be an engineering reason but it can definitely be a productivity reason.

deleted 12y ago

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