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Yes. I find many developers and programmers to be very non-contemplative. This really hit me at OSCON this summer as I sat in session after session where the sp

Yes. I find many developers and programmers to be very non-contemplative. This really hit me at OSCON this summer as I sat in session after session where the speaker was trying to teach me multiple JS/DB/web-stack-whatever frameworks/platforms in 50 minutes. I am used to drinking from firehoses at developer conferences, but it really seemed over the top. There was absolutely no time to think deeply about any of these things. No wonder there are so many holes, bugs, and just fragile software.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
How much of the web was built on Fast? How much of a Stockholm Syndrome do we have for Fast? People routinely confuse motion with progress.
forgottenpass 12y ago
I'm not going to argue against the idea developers are non-contemplative (I'm also not not arguing it), I simply think what you describe is something else. This is the result of a market pressure that doesn't want to pay for developers that are contemplative. There is no use when they just want developers busting their ass with a color-inside-the-lines toolset, to build a run of the mill (technology-wise) webapp, and have it finished yesterday. They don't want to pay for more talent than that, and anyone with a CS degree will soon be out of their price range, so we've seen is a rise in popularity of hyper-accelerated tip-of-the-iceberg vocational education "hacker schools" and "boot camps." Developers do think deeply about things. Just at companies willing to hire someone with more than 5 years experience and give them time to think about problems.
emotionalcode 12y ago
I've been afraid of participating in any sort of developer / computer science / code gathering because of how extroverted and quickly moving it appears. Thing after thing is built, and called a different name, and I can't help but wonder whether participating would show me a perspective of something different, or more of the same. I'm a developer/(non-academically affiliated computer scientist) who spends an excessive amount of time thinking about my field, sometimes over the same concepts for many years. I don't know how many people like me exist; being the non-vocal kind of makes it seem like you don't (which I am quite fine with).
- mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  I feel the same way. I think it's worth trying it out, if only to step outside your comfort zone. There are a lot more people than you realize who are a bit more thoughtful; the culture just skews towards the loud. FWIW, I've been studying Haskell and enjoyed the community there. So far, most have struck me as fairly humble and studious.
  - emotionalcode 12y ago
    What Haskell community do you interact with? I spent some time on reddit.com/r/haskell while I was trying to learn some specifics of the language the first go around. I've been thinking of getting back into it.
    - mattgreenrocks 12y ago
      Yup, /r/haskell comes to mind. Also check out #nothaskell on freenode -- they're quite helpful.
markbnj 12y ago
I agree strongly with this, and it's not a new phenomenon. A lot of older engineers will recall when management tried to measure us with LOC metrics. Today we have a whole culture built around speed. And yet a lot of the younger folks I work with seem to have trouble thinking deliberately through a problem and coming to a good solution. It's not their fault, imo. The pressure to move, move, move is tremendous. That Darwinian aspect of a market is not going away, but neither is the fact that writing good, solid software is a very contemplative and design-driven process. In my pretty long career I don't recall hearing of any projects that failed because they couldn't get code written quickly enough. I'm not sure why it is we always seem to come back to "fast" as the most desirable attribute of a programmer, but I suspect that it has something to do with the inability of management to accurately gauge risk or estimate timelines for a process they cannot really comprehend.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago

How much of the web was built on Fast? How much of a Stockholm Syndrome do we have for Fast? People routinely confuse motion with progress.

forgottenpass 12y ago

I'm not going to argue against the idea developers are non-contemplative (I'm also not not arguing it), I simply think what you describe is something else. This is the result of a market pressure that doesn't want to pay for developers that are contemplative. There is no use when they just want developers busting their ass with a color-inside-the-lines toolset, to build a run of the mill (technology-wise) webapp, and have it finished yesterday. They don't want to pay for more talent than that, and anyone with a CS degree will soon be out of their price range, so we've seen is a rise in popularity of hyper-accelerated tip-of-the-iceberg vocational education "hacker schools" and "boot camps." Developers do think deeply about things. Just at companies willing to hire someone with more than 5 years experience and give them time to think about problems.

emotionalcode 12y ago

I've been afraid of participating in any sort of developer / computer science / code gathering because of how extroverted and quickly moving it appears. Thing after thing is built, and called a different name, and I can't help but wonder whether participating would show me a perspective of something different, or more of the same. I'm a developer/(non-academically affiliated computer scientist) who spends an excessive amount of time thinking about my field, sometimes over the same concepts for many years. I don't know how many people like me exist; being the non-vocal kind of makes it seem like you don't (which I am quite fine with).

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
I feel the same way. I think it's worth trying it out, if only to step outside your comfort zone. There are a lot more people than you realize who are a bit more thoughtful; the culture just skews towards the loud. FWIW, I've been studying Haskell and enjoyed the community there. So far, most have struck me as fairly humble and studious.
- emotionalcode 12y ago
  What Haskell community do you interact with? I spent some time on reddit.com/r/haskell while I was trying to learn some specifics of the language the first go around. I've been thinking of getting back into it.
  - mattgreenrocks 12y ago
    Yup, /r/haskell comes to mind. Also check out #nothaskell on freenode -- they're quite helpful.

markbnj 12y ago

I agree strongly with this, and it's not a new phenomenon. A lot of older engineers will recall when management tried to measure us with LOC metrics. Today we have a whole culture built around speed. And yet a lot of the younger folks I work with seem to have trouble thinking deliberately through a problem and coming to a good solution. It's not their fault, imo. The pressure to move, move, move is tremendous. That Darwinian aspect of a market is not going away, but neither is the fact that writing good, solid software is a very contemplative and design-driven process. In my pretty long career I don't recall hearing of any projects that failed because they couldn't get code written quickly enough. I'm not sure why it is we always seem to come back to "fast" as the most desirable attribute of a programmer, but I suspect that it has something to do with the inability of management to accurately gauge risk or estimate timelines for a process they cannot really comprehend.