This document discusses the problem of "tool-shaming" in technology, where developers put down or judge others for their choice of tools, programming languages, or experience levels. It notes that this gatekeeping behavior can discourage new learners, push knowledge out of communities, and limit diversity of thought. While healthy debates about tools are fine, the document argues tool-shaming should be avoided as it is counterproductive and hurts people. Developers are encouraged to be mindful of context and how their words may impact others differently.
12. Relevance in today’s ecosystem
● How am I going to keep up with that?
● How is anyone else self taught going to keep up with that?
● How is someone taught going to keep up with that?
The Computer - a person.
Ada Lovelace
Grace Hopper - COBOL, first compiler
Sister Mary Keller - BASIC, first comp science for women
Margret Hamilton, NASA
Kathleen Booth, first assembly language
NASA, Bletchley Park
Women’s work, women were programmers.
From the 1970’s it changes, competition in computing arrives via hardware at home, buiild you own kits, which comes with software
then into business with the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amstrad. The women disappear, and market share of hardware plus competing software packages happens.
By 1990s, your hardware and your software defines who you are.
Jetbrains: your IDE doesn’t make you a bad developer, you make you a bad developer. Whatever IDE you use to autocomplete code or lint isn’t going to stop you writing a controller that’s 1000 lines of code or copy pasting a 50 line loop.
jQuery: was made to fix a problem with browser compatibility, a problem that has now been solved. But, it’s still actively maintained, and lots of people use it. It might mean you’re using an outdated tool, but lots and lots of projects still use it, and until you have the time and resource torewrite a whole frontend jQuery spaghetti, you’re stuck with it.
Angular: When something new comes along, people sometimes just assume that what they used to use stops being used by everyone and stops evolving. It’s evolving, and people are using it, and you can still do cool stuff with it - it’s just a choice
Wordpress: contains code, people write code in exchange for money, they are developers, sorry.
Jetbrains: your IDE doesn’t make you a bad developer, you make you a bad developer. Whatever IDE you use to autocomplete code or lint isn’t going to stop you writing a controller that’s 1000 lines of code or copy pasting a 50 line loop.
jQuery: was made to fix a problem with browser compatibility, a problem that has now been solved. But, it’s still actively maintained, and lots of people use it. It might mean you’re using an outdated tool, but lots and lots of projects still use it, and until you have the time and resource torewrite a whole frontend jQuery spaghetti, you’re stuck with it.
Angular: When something new comes along, people sometimes just assume that what they used to use stops being used by everyone and stops evolving. It’s evolving, and people are using it, and you can still do cool stuff with it - it’s just a choice
Wordpress: contains code, people write code in exchange for money, they are developers, sorry.
Jetbrains: your IDE doesn’t make you a bad developer, you make you a bad developer. Whatever IDE you use to autocomplete code or lint isn’t going to stop you writing a controller that’s 1000 lines of code or copy pasting a 50 line loop.
jQuery: was made to fix a problem with browser compatibility, a problem that has now been solved. But, it’s still actively maintained, and lots of people use it. It might mean you’re using an outdated tool, but lots and lots of projects still use it, and until you have the time and resource torewrite a whole frontend jQuery spaghetti, you’re stuck with it.
Angular: When something new comes along, people sometimes just assume that what they used to use stops being used by everyone and stops evolving. It’s evolving, and people are using it, and you can still do cool stuff with it - it’s just a choice
Wordpress: contains code, people write code in exchange for money, they are developers, sorry.
Jetbrains: your IDE doesn’t make you a bad developer, you make you a bad developer. Whatever IDE you use to autocomplete code or lint isn’t going to stop you writing a controller that’s 1000 lines of code or copy pasting a 50 line loop.
jQuery: was made to fix a problem with browser compatibility, a problem that has now been solved. But, it’s still actively maintained, and lots of people use it. It might mean you’re using an outdated tool, but lots and lots of projects still use it, and until you have the time and resource torewrite a whole frontend jQuery spaghetti, you’re stuck with it.
Angular: When something new comes along, people sometimes just assume that what they used to use stops being used by everyone and stops evolving. It’s evolving, and people are using it, and you can still do cool stuff with it - it’s just a choice
Wordpress: contains code, people write code in exchange for money, they are developers, sorry.
Jetbrains: your IDE doesn’t make you a bad developer, you make you a bad developer. Whatever IDE you use to autocomplete code or lint isn’t going to stop you writing a controller that’s 1000 lines of code or copy pasting a 50 line loop.
jQuery: was made to fix a problem with browser compatibility, a problem that has now been solved. But, it’s still actively maintained, and lots of people use it. It might mean you’re using an outdated tool, but lots and lots of projects still use it, and until you have the time and resource torewrite a whole frontend jQuery spaghetti, you’re stuck with it.
Angular: When something new comes along, people sometimes just assume that what they used to use stops being used by everyone and stops evolving. It’s evolving, and people are using it, and you can still do cool stuff with it - it’s just a choice
Wordpress: contains code, people write code in exchange for money, they are developers, sorry.
ProgrammerNews:
Your apprentices have the potential to be your future, as investments that can build into some of the most important people in your business. If you try and mould them this way, you will either hamstring their development or they will get frightened off and leave, and I have seen both.
People more comfortable with older tech are likely to be your biggest source of domain knowledge. If you declare X tech to be ‘in’, and shame their out of date knowledge, you risk pushing them out, and you can’t get domain knowledge back, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
On the flip side of this point: locking down your business into one set of tooling makes absolutely no sense. I have seen a business completely crippled by this approach - you limit your languages, you limit your tech, you limit your hiring opportunities, you can’t progress.
In the industry as a whole, it creates silos with an “us-and-them” approach.
Your apprentices have the potential to be your future, as investments that can build into some of the most important people in your business. If you try and mould them this way, you will either hamstring their development or they will get frightened off and leave, and I have seen both.
People more comfortable with older tech are likely to be your biggest source of domain knowledge. If you declare X tech to be ‘in’, and shame their out of date knowledge, you risk pushing them out, and you can’t get domain knowledge back, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
On the flip side of this point: locking down your business into one set of tooling makes absolutely no sense. I have seen a business completely crippled by this approach - you limit your languages, you limit your tech, you limit your hiring opportunities, you can’t progress.
In the industry as a whole, it creates silos with an “us-and-them” approach.
Your apprentices have the potential to be your future, as investments that can build into some of the most important people in your business. If you try and mould them this way, you will either hamstring their development or they will get frightened off and leave, and I have seen both.
People more comfortable with older tech are likely to be your biggest source of domain knowledge. If you declare X tech to be ‘in’, and shame their out of date knowledge, you risk pushing them out, and you can’t get domain knowledge back, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
On the flip side of this point: locking down your business into one set of tooling makes absolutely no sense. I have seen a business completely crippled by this approach - you limit your languages, you limit your tech, you limit your hiring opportunities, you can’t progress.
In the industry as a whole, it creates silos with an “us-and-them” approach.
Your apprentices have the potential to be your future, as investments that can build into some of the most important people in your business. If you try and mould them this way, you will either hamstring their development or they will get frightened off and leave, and I have seen both.
People more comfortable with older tech are likely to be your biggest source of domain knowledge. If you declare X tech to be ‘in’, and shame their out of date knowledge, you risk pushing them out, and you can’t get domain knowledge back, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
On the flip side of this point: locking down your business into one set of tooling makes absolutely no sense. I have seen a business completely crippled by this approach - you limit your languages, you limit your tech, you limit your hiring opportunities, you can’t progress.
In the industry as a whole, it creates silos with an “us-and-them” approach.
Your apprentices have the potential to be your future, as investments that can build into some of the most important people in your business. If you try and mould them this way, you will either hamstring their development or they will get frightened off and leave, and I have seen both.
People more comfortable with older tech are likely to be your biggest source of domain knowledge. If you declare X tech to be ‘in’, and shame their out of date knowledge, you risk pushing them out, and you can’t get domain knowledge back, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
On the flip side of this point: locking down your business into one set of tooling makes absolutely no sense. I have seen a business completely crippled by this approach - you limit your languages, you limit your tech, you limit your hiring opportunities, you can’t progress.
In the industry as a whole, it creates silos with an “us-and-them” approach.
Gatekeeping - the best bit about tech is the barrier to entry. This stops that
This is the most important slide of all.
Once, the internet was the webmaster, a sort of basic designer/coder. Now it’s powering economies forward.
E-Commerce is the new high street. Data is the new oil. Digital has transformed marketing. And what does that mean?
Data Scientists, UX Designers, UI Designers, Digital Marketers, SEO specialists, Project management from Agile, Scrum masters, Manual QA testing, TestOps, DevOps, Developer Relations and Developers all sit in the same namespace.
If you spread gatekeeping and tool shaming, we’re going to have marketing deparments full of Piers Morgans, Data Science powered by Katie Hopkins. It will put up barriers between disciplines, and we, as a sector of industry, should be better than that.
Some of you may not class as yourself as developer relations, but still do talks - which fits into this point. This also applies to internal talks inside your engineering teams. Developer Relations has, by the nature of the role and the passionate people in it, taken on more from it’s beginnings of developer-to-developer knowledge exchange to naturally representing the industry and pushing culture forward. Those who speak, represent and influence the tech industry strive to change culture and should. Addressing problems like this should be on our shoulders.
Now, you as a whole, as developers, as managers, as business owners. Small quips have a big impact, new or young developers like soundbites, they want to be part of this community. Your actions can change things. You can correct soundbites that are wrong, for instance looking at the Nudge Unit - set up by the government, to apply social changes by using behavioural economics.
Some of you may not class as yourself as developer relations, but still do talks - which fits into this point. This also applies to internal talks inside your engineering teams. Developer Relations has, by the nature of the role and the passionate people in it, taken on more from it’s beginnings of developer-to-developer knowledge exchange to naturally representing the industry and pushing culture forward. Those who speak, represent and influence the tech industry strive to change culture and should. Addressing problems like this should be on our shoulders.
Now, you as a whole, as developers, as managers, as business owners. Small quips have a big impact, new or young developers like soundbites, they want to be part of this community. Your actions can change things. You can correct soundbites that are wrong, for instance looking at the Nudge Unit - set up by the government, to apply social changes by using behavioural economics.
What are they up to?
ARGUMENTS!
Three developers, 2 ½ hours, 40k
You know what? Pick one, let the keyboard warriors sort it out an argument that has two viewpoints that are valid and therefore will go on for the end of time.
Emacs vs Vim! Still happening on reddit, still happening on hackernews, a war still going on since usenet group days. Articles everywhere, some now saying stop debating it. One is a tool that does it that way, other does it this way. Who cares?
