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Comment by zerostar07 | Hacker News Reader

The author makes the case that programming is a trend-ridden profession, that is false. Some programming styles and languages get widespread not because of herd-like memetism, but because they're actually better than alternatives, or some cases because of a corporate choice (such as objC, win32's CamelCase, javascript's java like syntax(Sun) ). In fact most of the evolution of programming ended in the 80s. The frontpages of reddit and HN are full of people who are overly enthusiastic about things like functional languages, 16 bit CPUs, CSS programming and rounded rectangles, but those are rarely more than the fad of the day. For most people who want to solve problems with computers, programming is a tool. You don't see plumbers and electricians choose their tools based on how cool and fashionable they look.

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The interesting thing here is people equate pop culture with being trendy. I think it's entirely possible for a pop culture of programming to exist, but I think in general what this discussion on this thread proves is that there are multiple cultures existing within developer communities, and a lot of devs exist within many of these circles. What's more, the "pop culture" element of programming does not necessarily contribute to the rate of change! The communication mechanisms within programming (Hacker News, Twitter, Reditt, mailing lists, forums etc, that is what accelerates the rate of change within the developer community. Pop culture is actually NOT that fast. People need to spend time performing it before something becomes pop (i.e. the idea that Hipsters start all fads, because they find them first and that is how they spread)

I would say The Active Contributors--The people contribute to open source projects mailing lists etc. These people help promote certain "styles" of programming over others. They contribute to make the things that work even better. These things they create are then consumed by other members of the community.

Pop culture is by nature trendy, you can only listen so many times to the same song before it gets boring. Popular art aims to please, pleasure has certain characteristics, it gets old, it gets kitsch and is driven by novelty. There's no such comparison for programming, you can use the same old language millions of times without any diminishing returns. It's really not even a valid comparison, it's apples to oranges. The one relevant analogy i can think of is between programming languages and musical instruments.

Also, IMHO there are no superstar programmers who can influence developers. All the good devs i know are too arrogant to take any suggestion based only on who suggested it.

> You don't see plumbers and electricians choose their tools based on how cool and fashionable they look.

I'm not sure that's a useful comparison. I would argue that plumbers and electricians have a more clearly defined problem space with a large body of existing solutions and conventions. Programming as a trade, or craft however is considerably less mature and what may look to you like developers choosing tools based on fashion is probably more a reflection of how far we are from settling on a the _right_ way to build software.

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