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I don't think the "javascripters" (whoever they are) are behind all the fragmentation. What we're seeing is caused by a low barrier to entry combined with a lar

I don't think the "javascripters" (whoever they are) are behind all the fragmentation. What we're seeing is caused by a low barrier to entry combined with a larger number of people who want to profit from a lucrative business pattern. That pattern is to create a technology that addresses a grievance (real or imagined), create a community around that technology to help promote it, then sell consulting fees once companies adopt it. This has worked brilliantly in the past (Enterprise Java in the 90s, Scrum, Ruby on Rails) and continues to make the companies behind it a lot of money in consulting fees.

sanderjd 11y ago
I don't think this is a good enough business model to explain so many tools popping up. Firstly, it's hard and expensive to make a tool good enough to become popular. But more importantly (and increasingly), it's extremely hard and very risky to build a community to a critical mass where it can sustain itself, precisely because there are so many tools competing for attention. I think tools pop up despite this difficulty and risk, because people have real itches they're scratching. Introspectively, despite having many frustrations with my tools, and periodically coming up with ideas for tools that seem at the time like they might improve upon things, I know that my gut sense is not, "wow, I could just code this up, get a community going, and make tons of consulting cash!", but rather, "ugh that seems super hard and likely to result in many hours of unpaid labor, I'll just work around these issues and get back to work".
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  I think there's a misunderstanding; I'm not saying people profit from the tools. They profit from consulting for companies who have adopted the technology, which is a very, very lucrative field. Just look at the Rails consulting shops. edit: I just re-read my previous statement and you're absolutely correct in your analysis of what I actually said vs what I meant. I've since changed the post to read "technology" instead of "tool." What I meant to imply was that technologies like React and AngularJS were lucrative, not the supporting tools like gulp, grunt or npm. > "ugh that seems super hard and likely to result in many hours of unpaid labor, I'll just work around these issues and get back to work". I agree with you on that score. Unfortunately, unpaid labor on the side is an expectation of startup web development these days. Companies do not want you learning new technologies on the clock. They expect you to do that on your own. They expect you to contribute to and/or run your own open source projects. Just last week, my boss told me straight up that I was expected to make something that the company owns and profits from on my own unpaid free time to further my understanding of one of their core technologies. The "or else" was implied, of course.
  - robertfw 11y ago
    > Just last week, my boss told me straight up that I was expected to make something that the company owns and profits from on my own unpaid free time to further my understanding of one of their core technologies. The "or else" was implied, of course. Personally that would be a sign to start sending out my resume. Don't tolerate that kind of approach.

sanderjd 11y ago

I don't think this is a good enough business model to explain so many tools popping up. Firstly, it's hard and expensive to make a tool good enough to become popular. But more importantly (and increasingly), it's extremely hard and very risky to build a community to a critical mass where it can sustain itself, precisely because there are so many tools competing for attention. I think tools pop up despite this difficulty and risk, because people have real itches they're scratching. Introspectively, despite having many frustrations with my tools, and periodically coming up with ideas for tools that seem at the time like they might improve upon things, I know that my gut sense is not, "wow, I could just code this up, get a community going, and make tons of consulting cash!", but rather, "ugh that seems super hard and likely to result in many hours of unpaid labor, I'll just work around these issues and get back to work".

PopeOfNope 11y ago
I think there's a misunderstanding; I'm not saying people profit from the tools. They profit from consulting for companies who have adopted the technology, which is a very, very lucrative field. Just look at the Rails consulting shops. edit: I just re-read my previous statement and you're absolutely correct in your analysis of what I actually said vs what I meant. I've since changed the post to read "technology" instead of "tool." What I meant to imply was that technologies like React and AngularJS were lucrative, not the supporting tools like gulp, grunt or npm. > "ugh that seems super hard and likely to result in many hours of unpaid labor, I'll just work around these issues and get back to work". I agree with you on that score. Unfortunately, unpaid labor on the side is an expectation of startup web development these days. Companies do not want you learning new technologies on the clock. They expect you to do that on your own. They expect you to contribute to and/or run your own open source projects. Just last week, my boss told me straight up that I was expected to make something that the company owns and profits from on my own unpaid free time to further my understanding of one of their core technologies. The "or else" was implied, of course.
- robertfw 11y ago
  > Just last week, my boss told me straight up that I was expected to make something that the company owns and profits from on my own unpaid free time to further my understanding of one of their core technologies. The "or else" was implied, of course. Personally that would be a sign to start sending out my resume. Don't tolerate that kind of approach.