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Comment by GussyGusGus | Hacker News Reader

All three of those things are merely symptoms of the real problem: a lack of professionalism.

I don't think it's so much a matter of professionalism as much as lazy thinking. For instance, the notion of "best practices" is utterly professional, but when overapplied or misapplied it results in some of the same symptoms.

Just some bits from DHH about this:

https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/statuses/1631100714

http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/42-we-need-both-eng...

"Professional to me is facade, fake sincerity, political correctness, not offending anyone, and everything else that makes life lifeless."

Which only goes to support the notion that much of Ruby's community has issues from the top down. We're speaking of computer science, in which objective, rational analysis leads to correct answers -- not appeals to emotion and an almost religious acceptance of poor solutions.

For every serious Ruby contributor and leader like Charles Nutter (JRuby), there are 5 DHHs or DDH adherents shouting down professionalism as if it was an anathema to logical expression.

I agree, I think DHH's statements were bizarre. They seemed to assume a sort of binary idea of "professional." You were either an anal retentive, by the book pedantic clock puncher or you were a fun loving rock star. The truth is there's a wide gamut and I think it's great for people to be "professional" without going to some sort of IBM-style extreme.

Times change. IBM-style "professional" is not the "anal retentive, by the book pedantic clock puncher" you might think. I worked there over 10 years ago, and we had no written dress code, flex-time scheduling, remote work, etc. The building I worked in had a 9 hole putt-putt course outside it, with foosball tables in a couple of the stairway landings.

Interesting how long we can hold on to perceptions from the past, even when they've been wrong for over a decade.

(I'm not implying that I'm disagreeing with you, in fact I think this shows that even what people think of as "pedantic clock puncher" and "fun loving rock star" from the outside is often very different on the inside.

Please.

Professionalism is what is killing great languages like C# and decent languages like Java.

It is just an excuse for those in suits to look down on the rest of who create software because we fucking like it, in a way we like, rather than in a way that doesn't threaten them.

Professionalism has very little to do with the "suits". In fact, I have seen that programmers are made to do our least professional work when some out-of-touch manager makes their decisions.

Professionalism is what is killing great languages like C# and decent languages like Java.

How so?

How do you fix lack of professionalism?

You don't. Non-professionals will become professionals with time and experience, but there will always be more non-professionals to take their place. The only reason some communities have to deal with more non-professionals than others, is that those communities are perceived to have a lower barrier to entry--so, when a non-professional tries to select a community to join/language to learn/tool to use/etc., they end up with the "easier" one, and thus the "easier" community builds a reputation of non-professionalism. The only real measure one can take to avoid this is to make the community unattractive to non-professionals: in est, to raise the barrier to entry.

I don't think barrier to entry is the only factor, if it's a factor at all. The Linux desktop has a relatively high barrier of entry, and yet a large part of its community has devolved into an elitist, cognitive dissonant crowd that's defending their usability problems by framing them as a good things.

lol he said "professionalism". Feels like 1997.

Common courtesy, decorum and a prevailing sense of personal responsibility are lost in these frothy times of high demand and inflated economy (i.e. the fast train to DoucheVille). But one day this economy is going to correct in earnest and all these allusions of grandeur are going to give way to some harsh realities. Being too-cool-to-act-professional is going to make a lot of mustaches sad.

Effective smart people are humble and kind (like Matz). Blowhards are insufferable douchebags and no amount of fake rebellion against 'professionalism' is ever going the change that.

Sorry, maybe I should elaborate. Professionalism is the act of work for pay. Exactly what you just denounced.

I've worked for many places where we joked about being "professionals" simply due to the fact that we were being paid.

The term "professionalism" is a dinosaur that has nothing at all to do with quality or attitude or really anything beyond someone paying you.

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