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Do we care more about what we've done or how we did it?

scottshipp on February 20, 2018

My crawling skin I just ran screaming from my LinkedIN feed. As you can imagine, most of my LinkedIN connections are fellow software ind...
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Bill Miller

Thank you for being someone else that doesn't care about the tools used. I thought I was almost alone.

Anyone that cares more that the Sistine Chapel was built with a shovel than the architecture and beauty of it is monumentally silly and looking for vain things to brag about.

I personally think that a customer should be left with a variant of the (somewhat stupid) gun motto ("You can have my software when you pry it from my cold dead hands"). Almost nobody cares that you used a particular technology, unless you did something crazy (e.g. Wrote a web server in BASH, just because you could) or you did it in a very unique manner (thinking outside the box).

Anyone with more than 5 years experience should be able to have a reasonably long list of technologies they've dealt with. After the list has 20 things on it (like a 10+, 20+, 30+ year developer) the count is immaterial. I always think: It's not an accomplishment unless many have said it can't be done; there's nothing special about doing something "normal" with a reasonable tool... that's just doing work that isn't deserving of applause.

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scottshipp

Your Sistine Chapel comparison is great, I might have to steal that!

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andrew

I think its both, its hard to argue that modern tools are, well, more modern. Inexperienced developers though, tend to think that latest tools will do the job FOR them, and this is a big mistake (no fingerpointing, Ruby on Rails!). Another extreme is doing modern things with outdated tools - cute, cool, but why suffer?

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Andrew Davis

Totally agree! The language wars are exhausting because it’s so hard to up with every new language that makes the headlines. I get tired of developers criticizing each other for using a language that started in the 90s instead of the 2010s.

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Stanley Sathler • Edited

HOLLY SHIT! THIS is exactly what I'm talking about. Nothing like an exciting post to get my morning even better.

Ok: if you detail what frameworks/libraries and tools you've used in our project, we can measure if you have certain knowledge. And of course: if you're coding projects to practice them, great, seems you're learning. But man... we're talking about the real world. And in the real world we build software for people. We try to make their lives easier. People don't care about how all this shit is done, as long as it resolves their problems.

Do you know React? Do you know Angular? I don't give a shit! Can you feel the company's energy? Are you excited to start changing the world with us? So that's what matters. The rest can be taught, but spirit... nah, it can't.

Of course that's just my opinion and it doesn't mean the absolutely truth. But that's how I see it.

Lovely post, Scott. ;)

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Amelia Gapin

HECK YES! THIS!!!!!!! I wish I could ❤️ it multiple times.