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Comment by locallost | Hacker News Reader

> Nothing worries me more than a senior engineer that has no opinion of their tools or how to approach building software. I’d rather someone give me opinions that I violently disagree with than for them to have no opinions at all. If you are using your tools, and you don’t love or hate them in a myriad of ways, you need to experience more

Strong disagree. If you haven't found an issue with something you love, or a useful aspect in something you hate, you need to experience more. I don't know if I'm senior other than doing this for a while, but I had more opinions when I was starting out than now. I do have more clear opinions now in terms of being able to say why something is important. But a great number of things (statement vague on purpose) people have strong opinions about are not really important.

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I totally get what you say and respect it but I can also understand what the author means by saying that. Perhaps he did it in a very radical/too opinionated manner. Let me explain: When I am interviewing someone, I also like to ask about opinions on tooling they like/use. For example, the person I am interviewing has on his/her CV that has plenty of experience with Terraform (or I can infer it from the work experience section). One question I would ask is: What do you find good and bad about it? This helps me to get a clue about the reasoning process of the person (e.g "This person uses this tool blindly because is the mainstream thing to do" or "that decision came from a more or less rational analysis and has made the exercise of considering the flaws"). I value this because personally, I want people that can understand the consequences of a technical decision, not fanboys that learnt how to use a hammer at some point and never asked themselves if a hammer is the right thing to use (or even if they are using it right).

I think you are correct in the approach to see if the individual themselves, on a case by case basis, can give well thought out reasons for their choices.

But there can be a lot of fatigue in software process and tool selection, because it can be so opinionated and change from year to year quickly. I think it's the lack of good scientific studies of processes, and the immense difficulty of constructing such a study, which often leads "the best way" of doing something, to be based on personal opinions and sometimes, whatever is popular in the community at the moment.

Sometimes I think that the quality of a product, really only depends on the quality of the individuals making it, tools are just a means to achieve the goal, as they can be made malable. But I digress, it's not so simple.

Totally agreed. I just decided for my own sanity that some things just aren't worth arguing about. Obviously I have opinions on my tools, but I'm not going to force my preferences on others, or spend energy endlessly debating those preferences. Work is enough mental load as is.

In my experience, strong opinions about details tend to derail conversations, drain energy out of a group and just make things more difficult than they need to be.

At work they use a lot of tools that have better alternatives, or alternatives that I prefer, but I choose to work with what I have and just get shit done.

> I just decided for my own sanity that some things just aren't worth arguing about.

Yep, I was raised to question and then argue everything with passion. It’s a waste of time. Mostly people will say they agree just to make you stop wasting time; they won’t be convinced (even if you are right). I want all that wasted time back now that I’m older. I don’t need people to agree with me on everything, or actually hardly anything. And when it’s worth going to battle, you can in those rare cases.

I'm not a parent but that sounds like parenting on hard mode.

And I couldn't agree more - because I don't argue over every little thing, I feel like my opinions are more respected and heard when I do. (Or maybe that's just a projection of how I respond to others.)

I think you misinterpret that: your stance is clearly having an opinion about that matter.

The author is worried if you just shrug and cannot give any opinion or reasoning (which can be "this is unimportant vs the grand scheme so I dont care much about that here, but xyz more") and I would agree there.

On the other hand, with many things which I had initial frustrations about and I always assumed it's because of something I don't know and certainly there must be a reason why it's popular so I didn't want to express opinions about it and let it go, because I didn't want to seem like an ignorant person ranting about something they don't know how to use, I have developed stronger and more hateful opinions about now that I have years of experience and confidence. And then I think many who use those tools have this Stockholm syndrome type of thing happening where they try to justify why something is bad.

Yeah. While there are tools and design approaches I disagree with, I do think that for the most part most stuff kind of works, and the differences aren't actually that great between good-enough and optimal. Worrying too much about these things is the sort of majoring-in-the-minors I expect from inexperienced developers.

I'm much more worried about building something interesting than building something with interesting technology.

I can confirm. I found out that people who have "violently" strong opinions on how one tool is much worst are the ones who ... did not actually tried the other tool. In our company, people who never worked with Eclipse need to pick on it constantly, I dont know why.

People who actually switched from one to another (some forever some for at some time) are waaaay calmer in their opinions.

I interpreted this as the author saying that a senior dev will have "found an issue with something [they] love, or a useful aspect in something [they] hate..." "in a myriad of ways." I.e. I think the author agrees with you.

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