I recently read @adiozdaniel's piece on developers "losing their manners"—and while I appreciate the sentiment, I think it misses who's actually keeping the discipline alive.
There's a recurring narrative in tech circles that modern developers have "lost their manners." That we've become careless. That we lean too heavily on frameworks, abstractions, and cloud elasticity. That we no longer optimize because hardware is cheap and the cloud will absorb the rest.
It's a compelling story—but it's also a story written from the vantage point of people who never feel the bill.
I work primarily with small and small-to-medium businesses. And in this world, inefficiency isn't an aesthetic flaw or a philosophical debate. It's a cost center. It's a risk multiplier. It's a liability that lands directly on someone's desk.
So when I hear arguments about "manners" in software development, I don't hear nostalgia. I hear a mismatch between who pays the price and who gets to be casual about it.
The Cloud Doesn't Absorb Inefficiency—People Do
In enterprise environments, inefficiency is often invisible. A slow function becomes a slightly larger AWS bill. A bloated dependency becomes a future security audit. A sloppy architectural choice becomes "technical debt" for another team. A misconfigured service becomes a rounding error in a multi-million-dollar budget.
But in SMB/S ecosystems, the physics are different.
There is no abstraction layer to hide behind. There is no "someone else's budget." There is no infinite runway.
Every inefficiency has a name attached to it—a founder, a manager, a family-run operation, a team that cannot simply "scale up" because the code wasn't written with care.
This is why habits matter. Not because of nostalgia. Not because of "manners." But because the consequences are immediate and real.
In SMB/S, Habits Become Infrastructure
There's a popular belief that systems shape developer behavior. And that's true—to a point.
But in small-scale environments, the inverse is equally true: developer habits become the system.
When you don't have layers of infrastructure to absorb sloppiness, your norms become your safety net. You validate inputs because no one else will. You optimize queries because the database is small and precious. You avoid unnecessary dependencies because every update is a risk. You document decisions because future you is the only "team" available. You design for clarity because the next person touching the code might be the owner, not an engineer.
These aren't "manners." They're survival strategies.
The Real Divide Isn't Old vs. New—It's Who Carries the Weight
The debate about "losing our manners" in software development often misses the real axis of difference:
Enterprise developers are insulated from the cost of inefficiency. SMB/S developers are not.
When you work close to the metal—financially, operationally, emotionally—you develop a different relationship with your craft. You don't optimize because you're old-school. You optimize because you can't rely on infrastructure to bail you out.
You don't avoid unnecessary dependencies because you're stubborn. You avoid them because a single vulnerability can take down a business.
You don't write clear code because you're virtuous. You write it because someone's livelihood depends on it.
This isn't about manners. It's about stewardship.
Craft Isn't a Luxury—It's a Form of Care
There's a quiet dignity in building software for small businesses. You see the impact of your decisions. You feel the weight of your choices. You understand that "good enough" isn't always good enough.
And that's why the "manners" framing rings hollow.
Because in SMB/S environments, efficiency becomes a form of respect. Clarity becomes protection. Discipline becomes care. Craft becomes a way of honoring the people who trust you with their operations.
Not for the code—but for the humans behind it.
If We Want Better Software, We Need Better Habits—Not Bigger Servers
The cloud can scale. Budgets cannot.
Frameworks can abstract. Consequences cannot.
Systems can encourage shortcuts. But habits determine whether we take them.
And in the world I work in—the world of small businesses, family operations, and resource-constrained teams—habits aren't optional. They're the backbone of resilience.
So no, we haven't "lost our manners." We've simply forgotten that someone, somewhere, always carries the weight of our choices.
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