Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

The Bad Guys want you to feel insecure about your work, your position, your relative standing, and everything else because their worst nightmare is that software engineers and scientists and thinkers wake up and realize how much leverage they would actually have if they were organized and capable of looking out for their own interests. We'd reshape the entire business landscape, and the power relationships between us and them would be inverted.

They prey on the insecurity of the smartest people. It makes us easy to take advantage of, and compromises almost all of our leverage.

Every time you let them sit in your head and natter about how your work isn't good enough because it doesn't isn't in accord with what they see as "professional", you're letting them win. The problem with assholes is that their imprints live on even years after you get away from them. It takes conscious effort to get that lingering cognitive load out of your mind.

We need to step back and simplify: solve problems, and do it well. (This includes documentation and testing, when appropriate.) Make stuff, make it good, make what's good better. We need to get back to that, rather than slugging it out over "agile" and TDD and nonsense. Zed Shaw got it right: http://programming-motherfucker.com/

I've been staring at your comment and I really can't figure out how to parse it. You're rambling like a crazy person and I can't tell why. Are these supposed to be real people? Some fake force you should use as motivation? Are you honestly saying people have 'nightmares about thinkers waking up'? And come on mailing lists to encourage flame wars?

Really? From my experience the "Bad Guys" don't give a shit about code quality and will shower you with praise if you give them the crappiest code possible, as long as you make the changes they want 5 minutes ago. This article is really talking about the insecurity that other programmers inculcate, because we're all very smart and all very competitive.

The Bad Guys don't care about code quality, but they want programmers to be insecure. They do, however, play divide-and-conquer games against programmers and encourage our own cannibalism (e.g. long email flamewars about tabs vs. spaces) as well as that rockstar/ninja bullshit.

Wait, flamewars about spaces vs tabs are part of a conspiracy to keep programmers insecure and frightened? You'd better explain that remark.

Executives don't care about that specific flamewar (or even know that it exists) but they like creating environments where we slug each other over minor, superficial differences in coding style because (a) it makes us look stupid and petty, and (b) it tires us out and makes us even easier to steal from.

Programmers are often oblivious, when they find themselves in work environments that are designed to play divide-and-conquer games against them, to what is going on. Executives often enable/encourage the worst traits of programmers in order to weaken the group.

Please seek out a therapist to talk to. You can't be happy with the level of anger and resentment that you seem to have right now. At first I thought you were an attention seeking jerk, but after reading your comment history, I think you have gotten yourself into a bad place in life. Please consider it.

Shut up, jerk.

So, basically, your comment has nothing to do with this article?

Competitive to what end? There is no hard limit on the amount of code that can be written. If I write something that is not great, it doesn't prevent you in any way from writing something amazing, so why concern yourself with what I am doing at all? In my experience, the only time I start to become critical of other programmers is when I feel insecure about my standing, like in the workplace, which is an environment that is fabricated by someone else (earlier referred to as "Bad Guys").

With that, I'm inclined to agree with the parent, though perhaps his use of Bad Guys does detract from the underlying message. I don't think there is some deep plot by born-evil people to keep programmers down, but I agree with the point that we could all do much better by working together in a positive way instead of trying to out-shame each other in hopes of capturing the top prize of impressing someone else.

Wow. When are you going to post a comment that isn't about Our Malicious Overlords?

The people who promote careful programming methodologies aren't trying to make people miserable. In fact I'd lay half the blame with the OP, who needs to rein in a tendency to overthink things. We don't need a villain here.

As usual Michael, I agree wholeheartedly.

The Bad Guys are plentiful and they include scope creepers, late/non payers and idea guys offering equity.

Our tribe (to borrow from your parlance) is goodhearted and kind and usually sees the best in people.

That is until we are crushed under the disillusioning reality that the Screwheads (to borrow from HST's parlance) rule the world and will exploit us instinctively. Our relationship with the Bad Guys/Screwheads is no different than the lion and the wildebeest.

Fortunately we can outsmart the bastards and destroy their outdated business models by harnessing the power of networked machine intelligence.

Either I'm missing a bunch of literary references, or you guys are starting a cult. Maybe both.

Well said. Wow, Zed's motherfucker link is gold. Thanks for sharing it.

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