
Things will not change - tobiastom
https://tobiastom.name/articles/things-will-not-change
======
ryandrake
> When someone actually has built something, and it could be used by someone,
> they only get feedback about the size of the pages, how slow it is and that
> they should have used some other technology after all.

I know of a certain community where this seems to happen a lot. Instead of
commenting on the actual content or the idea, it's always "Their web page
doesn't SCROLL the way I like!!" and "What amateurs--they should have used
Angular React Ember js with Docker!!" and "I didn't read any of the article
but the title is CLICK BAIT!"

People are often quick to make the easy critique of something based on
irrelevant surface characteristics.

~~~
nikanj
Messed up js scrolling often means I _can't_ read the actual content. I know
WP8 isn't that common, but should I just quietly accept that yet another
developer decided to "innovate" and wrote a super sexy scroller that crashes
and burns on my browser?

~~~
mrspeaker
Not quietly, but perhaps just not loudly to everyone around you... an email to
the author is a billion times better than another worthless HN comment about
color contrast.

~~~
Joeboy
wrt marginal design choices like colour schemes I absolutely agree, HN people
spend too much time bickering about them. But people who wilfully display
static content in such a way that people can't see it should be publicly
shamed, pour encourager les autres. It's been a solved problem since 1993.

------
mwfunk
This wasn't really explicit in the article, but a lot of it came across as
frustration at the overwhelming negativity or snarkiness in forums/mailing
lists/etc. If so, I think that's just the consequence of these forms of
communication not scaling well as more and more and more people participate in
them. It's so common to hear people complain about how their chosen Internet
communities aren't like they used to be- everyone used to be so thoughtful,
now it's just a bunch of precocious kids flaming each other over dumb things.
I remember feeling the same way about Usenet circa 1996, or Slashdot circa
2000.

Constructive, productive communities are very tenuous things and I think
there's just a natural entropy that happens as they grow where the tone of the
conversation gets watered down, snarkiness and flames beget more snarkiness
and flames, the more mature community members get annoyed and stop
participating, and after a while it's just a bunch of people who don't know
what they don't know screaming at each other about which phone/language/Linux
distro/whatever they use.

It's tempting to attribute this to the profession as a whole ("my fellow
developers used to be interesting, now they're all jerks!"), but I think it's
more just the inevitable deterioration someone sees if they go to the same
forums or stay on the same mailing lists for a few years. It might also be due
to the observer getting more mature and clueful and picking up on negatives
that have always been present in those communities, but previously unnoticed.
Back in 1995 I really put Usenet on a pedestal, but that's partially because I
was way more immature and thought many of the other posters were far more
insightful than they actually were. In other words, it may seem like everyone
else has become really clueless and immature but part of that could just be
you, the observer, becoming more experienced and mature.

~~~
unclebucknasty
I agree with much of your comment.

At the same, it's also true that people have generally gotten nastier towards
one another.

------
lmm
It's possible to learn from other people. And better tools do make your life
better, even when "nothing was wrong" with the old tools. While you shouldn't
try to upset people, negative feedback is valuable. I don't think this is the
way forward.

~~~
shredprez
At some point it does start to feel like the focus on tools is
disproportionate. Have we begun shuffling around the gadgets in our toolbox to
distract ourselves from the difficult problems we need to solve? Sometimes I
think so. Have we developed an expectation that our toolset should eventually
become so perfect we just stack it up and the job is done? Sometimes I think
so.

Better tools improve our lives, but better tools should not be the primary
focus of average developers. If too much of the labor force becomes obsessed
with creating tools, there won't be enough of us left to build great things
with them. If we spend too much of our time testing new tools, our innovation
will end with tools.

Creating great things takes mastery. Mastery requires a foundation. If we
aren't careful, we may soon become masters of rejiggering our stack with no
idea what to do once it's complete. If that becomes the dominant habit of our
industry, we'll be in trouble.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Good points. Better tools generally provide value. At the same time, an
infinite number of tools doesn't provide infinite value. There is a tipping
point in tool proliferation wherein we see, not only diminishing returns, but
a deleterious effect on productivity.

The pace of change dictates that threshold to some extent. For instance, when
the hottest tool for x or y barely survives the new product development life-
cycle, then it's a problem. When this is combined with the sometimes hyper-
opinionated, absolutist culture referenced by the author, then we're deeming
products obsolete before they've even been used.

I've come to call it tech for the sake of tech. It starts to become divorced
from the business and exists for its own sake. One cure for this is running
your own business that relies on the code you produce. Tendencies toward
infinite refactoring and constantly learning the latest tool-set to swap in
will die quickly, when stacked against the need to just get it done.

------
vijayr
_People sometimes give you funny faces when you tell them that you use „old
and „outdated ones (e.g. Mercurial, Less, PHP)._

This is so true. I've seen people refuse to take web dev classes in PHP and
wait for availability of Java/Python classes (and not doing anything in the
interim). I've seen people from marketing, sales, recruitment etc (who've
never written code) put down PHP. It gets a little annoying at times.

~~~
ForHackernews
To be fair, PHP is kinda dangerous, especially in the hands of novices.
Honestly, a world with fewer people-who've-never-written-code writing PHP
doesn't sound like a bad start to me.

Don't get me wrong, it's _possible_ to write great code in PHP, it's just a
language that makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot.

~~~
darrelld
You hear the same argument for C / C++ but you don't see people putting it
down as much as PHP.

~~~
lmz
The beginner's C / C++ programs don't usually get put on the Internet (or even
on a local network).

~~~
general_failure
There is no such thing as a bad program. If it works, it's fine. Really...

~~~
thekingofspain
It's bad if it's susceptible to running an attacker's arbitrary code.

------
vitd
The author says:

"I accept that I cannot change anything with complaints."

I respectfully disagree as both a complainer and the implementer of things
that people frequently complain about. Not everyone can fix what's wrong with
their software (even when it's open source). Not everyone knows how or where
to give feedback. Sometimes all you can do is complain publicly, hope others
see it and help make the right people aware.

While I hate it when I write code that is broken or that people don't enjoy
using, I need to know about it. I sometimes go to forums where our users help
each other with our software. When I see complaints, I give the person a link
where they can explain their problem or desire in detail. It's extremely
helpful to us and to them.

Even if you don't reach the intended people with your complaint, saying it out
loud can be incredibly liberating. It allows you to walk away from it. Just
knowing that others are frustrated by the same issue makes you feel less
alone.

I understand what it's like to be around people who are always negative. And I
understand the posturing and snakiness in our field. I agree it needs work.
(Was that a complaint?) But it does serve a very important set of purposes.

------
steego
I searched for all the sentences with the word talk:

> Nobody talks to each other so everyone is reinventing the wheel.

> Still, nobody talks about sharing concepts that would definitely improve all
> of them.

> I will continue to talk to each and everyone about old, new and maybe broken
> technologies.

> Stop talking about tools, stop being a smart ass about why something should
> have been done differently.

I really dislike the opening of the last quote, and I think the author would
probably rephrase it if he looked at it in this context. I don't want people
to stop talking about tools more method, we just shouldn't be jerks about it
and we should ask more questions than we prescribe medicine.

As to the other points, I'm not entirely convinced I agree things have gotten
worse. I actually see more collaboration than I saw 10 years ago. I think he's
confusing the shear volume of open source projects with people not
collaborating and communicating. I think it's basically a lot easier for lone
coders to publish and share their solutions, so it appears the entire
collaborative landscape has changed.

------
angersock
I think that the entire "AppStore is broken" section is pretty well put into
perspective by the Puppygames blog (
[http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1677](http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1677)
). It's not that the platform owners are doing anything _right_...it's that
they've built walled gardens and effectively tricked devs into going there.

------
joepie91_
In some ways I agree, in some ways I disagree.

While a lot of recommendations are indeed largely hype (SPAs, MongoDB, ...)
and often not useful solutions, there really _are_ some technologies that
really _are_ just poor and/or broken from a technical point of view, and need
to be replaced. PHP and MongoDB (again!) come to mind.

As far as I'm concerned, discussion about new tools isn't the problem - hype
is. If newer tools legitimately make things easier, without any unreasonable
drawbacks, then it's perfectly okay to recommend them - but beware of false
simplicity.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> The majority of the developers are just too arrogant to look beyond their
> one nose.

That is an awesome choice of words, really. Just reading it makes me hopeful
for the future.

~~~
Retra
There's an 18th century proverb about this:

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

So this is hardly anything new. It's been the status quo for as long as people
have been learning. That's partly _why_ people like learning: because it makes
them feel powerful and privileged.

------
tricolon
LESS is outdated now? Surely not everyone uses Sass, right?

------
mirceal
to me this sounds like complaining about evolution (in the biological terms).
things are evolving, some experiments are failing, better ways of doing things
are emerging. is it stressful? sure. can one at sometimes feel overwhelmed?
absolutely.

it's always a balance between getting things done and evolving the way you
craft your things.

all things that are successful are build on other things. it's extremely rare
to start from scratch.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Better ways are not emerging though, or they haven't yet.

------
mikegirouard
You might want to turn off your debugging.

~~~
tobiastom
Thanks. How did you find out? :)

~~~
mikegirouard
There was a brief moment (it didn't survive a page refresh), where I could see
an exception dump.

------
curiousjorge
beautifully written. It hit every irk that have been brewing inside of me for
the past 4+ years or so.

Unfortunately, it's tough to find a job if you tell your employers what you
really think about their choice of tech stack sucks or they have no idea what
they are doing.

