Comment by jballanc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jballanc | Hacker News Reader

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I really don't understand how the world of iOS development has become one of the most cloistered developer communities in recent memory. Is it the gold rush mentality, maybe?

Seriously, some of the outright hostility I've seen in the iOS development community is breathtaking. Yes, there is a lot of money to be made in iOS development so, no, you probably don't need to practice community building in order to be successful...today.

Regardless, your snide comment about "Rails engineers" reveals your own ignorance on the subject. There are plenty of software engineers that use Ruby but not Rails, and any developer who cannot use Ruby without Rails is unlikely to be of any threat to "redefine iOS development culture", since RubyMotion is not Rails.

Edit: Also...since when have "hacker" and "respect for knowledge gained over 20+ years" ever had anything to do with each other? Take the "knowledge gained", evaluate it on its merits, and if you find it lacking, who cares over how many years it was gained?!? If you think you can do better, do so.

> I really don't understand how the world of iOS development has become one of the most cloistered developer communities in recent memory. Is it the gold rush mentality, maybe?

You must understand that the iOS development community has its roots in decades of engineering community, coming from NeXT, Mac OS and UNIX traditions.

We're simply not interested in the subpar engineering that comes from the inexperienced web developers joining the gold rush.

> Edit: Also...since when have "hacker" and "respect for knowledge gained over 20+ years" ever had anything to do with each other? Take the "knowledge gained", evaluate it on its merits, and if you find it lacking, who cares over how many years it was gained?!? If you think you can do better, do so.

Which is why we've watched the Rails community re-invent the wheel repeatedly over the past 6 years, consistently rediscovering abandoned methodologies, and then rediscovering why those methodologies were abandoned.

One of my favorite examples was the the breathless enthusiasm at the rediscovery of the (inefficient, abandoned) pure pre-fork model: http://tomayko.com/writings/unicorn-is-unix

Or, watching the extremely poor architecture of Rails waste vast troves of server CPU and RAM.

Or any other of the hundreds (thousands?) examples of junior engineers ignoring history and re-inventing failed architectures that would not have been so broken if they looked at what came before with anything other than disdain.

> We're simply not interested in the subpar engineering that comes from the inexperienced web developers joining the gold rush.

I'm sorry but that's a super douchey thing to say. It's not like there's a limited number of "seats" in the iOS community room, and oh no you wouldn't want to waste some seats on web developers.

And who are you to speak for the iOS community?

There is room for everyone and anyone to join development communities and contribute as much or as little as they want. No one is forcing you to help anyone out if you think they're not smart or cool enough for your tastes.

That's the beauty of all this, everyone is welcome. If you can't see that, you've missed out on some important lessons in your decades of engineering work..

> That's the beauty of all this, everyone is welcome. If you can't see that, you've missed out on some important lessons in your decades of engineering work..

Not all ideas are equally valid. Socially-driven technology shifts are often not an improvement, yet they can change the industry we all work in. If mobile development is overrun by Rails developers -- and the engineering approaches they promote (often while ignoring history) -- the mobile development community (and the industry) will suffer.

> You must understand that the iOS development community has its roots in decades of engineering community, coming from NeXT, Mac OS and UNIX traditions.

I'm sorry, but Fart Apps need not be the exclusive province of "very serious" developers.

> Or any other of the hundreds (thousands?) examples of junior engineers ignoring history and re-inventing failed architectures that would not have been so broken if they looked at what came before with anything other than disdain.

Maybe. Or perhaps the communication and people skills of the generation that came before them were somewhat lacking.

> Maybe. Or perhaps the communication and people skills of the generation that came before them were somewhat lacking.

Or perhaps we valued substance and were not so easily misled by style.

Meanwhile, the bubbles have given inordinate voice to the inexperienced and those lacking substance.

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