Eugene Cheah for Uilicious

Posted on Jun 5, 2019 • Updated on Aug 23, 2019 • Originally published at uilicious.com

Are we "developers" gatekeeping "knowledge" from our juniors and peers? 🤦

#discuss #beginners #motivation

Background Context

My startup co-founder recently wrote an article on what I previously considered "common knowledge", an article which went "viral".

Unfortunately, as per the rules of the internet. Anything "viral" will draw a fair bit of criticism and even personal attacks, especially outside dev.to; Some which I saw hurt my co-founder personally, as we look through them.

However, this is not about sexism, javascript, nor the internet rule (all which has valid problems worth highlighting separately).

This is about "developers", and our role in gatekeeping "knowledge" like the following from others

Javascript Array.push is 945x faster than Array.concat 🤯🤔

Shi Ling ・ May 2 '19 ・ 8 min read

#showdev #javascript #webperf

Personal attacks aside, what caught my attention, that drove me to write this article - was the following comment:

Isn't it obvious that ________________ are you a _____,
Never ever write such [ ] articles again.

Side note: As its not my intention to shame/attribute the original author. The quote is paraphrased to make it un-googleable and to remove expletives. To be clear, the exact wording is different

It struck me not only because of how cruel it was at the end - but how the statement, was something I was guilty of saying as well.

SL: Really?! push made such a big difference
EU: Well concat needs to create a new array, and copy everything
SL: Doesn't the javascript jvm, automatically optimize such execution? Seeing that I do not use the old array
EU: Well it doesn't, and unfortunately due to the spec ...
SL: I should write an article on this
EU: Isn't it very obvious, I doubt it's worth writing
SL: It wasn't obvious to me
EU: (in my head - I am surprised you didn't know)
EU: Ok, it's worth a try then
SL stands for Shi Ling, my co-founder. While EU represents me, Eugene

While it's much lighter in tone, the line of reasoning to not write the article is the same.

In the position of seniority, even lightly brushing off of such content being written can have chilling effects on other junior developers and peers. Especially in a much larger organization. So while such statements may not have deterred Shi Ling (she wrote it in the end), it could however for the rest of my peers around me silence them.

And was I wrong in my criticism!

Looking at the number of positive retweets and comments on how "I need to rewrite my code", or "I never knew", occurred. It wasn't obvious, and it is an article worth writing.

However, what hit me really hard - was when out of "frustration" or immaturity. I regrettably looked into the commenter's profile.

I realized it wasn't just a simple careless statement by a young teenager.

It was from a well respectable senior engineer, in charge of a large team of developers, with a similar background to me. To me, it was terrifying.

I was looking into the mirror, of what could be me in the future

And on further digging around the various comments, he was not the only one...

Which brings me to my next point...

PSA: What is common to you, may not be to another developer. So think twice before suppressing such content.

As an industry, programming is relatively immature, of being less then 200 years old (starting from Ada Lovelace). The web industry is even younger at being under 30 years old.

This pales drastically to

scientific medicine: ~2500 years old
architecture and construction: >5000 years old

As a result, the technology we learn seems to be constantly changing, with little in the way of a stable (think 12+ years) long term standard for anything.

By this definition: any assumptions you made on what is learned for your generation as "common knowledge" that isn't worth spreading, is a false assumption made to your junior and peers.

We should also kick out the notation that, if one does not "understand this", that individual is not deserving to be called a developer.

To clarify, my co-founder is by no means a "junior" developer. We both have very very different specializations.

While I may have really deep dive knowledge on the ES5 spec, and how V8 works internally, which distorted my view on what's considered "common knowledge" for javascript.

Inversely, she has really deep encyclopedia-like knowledge on the various quirks of CSS, and how modern front end frameworks like vue.js works. Something which I admittedly still make very fundamental novice mistakes till today.

So if my assumptions are wrong to a fellow "senior" developer with different specialization, wouldn't it be worse for a new "junior" developer. Especially with the rise of coding boot camps.

So until we can figure out a common stable universal engineering standard for programming, which we can assume as "common knowledge", like how architects or doctors do (which we probably will not for another 50 years). I am heavily ringing this bell now, as we are like no other industry out there.

Never make that assumption.

Heck, to the unconvinced old seniors. Many of us (including me) used to consider C style memory pointer manipulation as essential common knowledge, which in absence, we used as grounds for a "no hire" for juniors.

How wrong are we now in modern web development and the programming language they use?

Bro-grammer? Couldn't we be kinder?

Even with valid criticism...

Ask yourself, would you have possibly made the same mistake?
Would you like to have such things said to you, or your loved ones?
Is it constructive criticism?

Instead of gatekeeping what should be written or not written on "superior grounds". We could instead encourage improvement with our criticism.

For example, one repeated criticism. Is regarding benchmarking methodology. However instead of statements like.

Worst benchmarking ever

A kinder, more constructive comment would be

We could improve the benchmark by doing ____ instead of ____

And to say it upfront, for most of the constructive criticism on benchmarking, you were right. While it probably will not change the end result, due to the large difference in between. It is a valid area of improvement, and both my co-founder and I do thank you for that.

Or as XKCD lovingly put it

Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.

So which would you rather be?

Bro-grammer?

When I said this is not about sexism, I mean it.

The suppression of knowledge probably happens regardless of gender. It definitely happens from senior to junior as well.

However, the phrase "Bro-grammer" is used intentionally.

I am sure there are exceptions (there always is), but this is more on us the majority, the male gender of the development community, then the other way.

And while I will not have any statistical numbers to back it up.

The minority groups within our community know very well how it feels like to have their voice heavily suppressed.

The minority groups are the ones most mindful on not gatekeeping "knowledge" from others.

For almost all the personal attacks / mean criticism I seen to my co-founder was from our side of the male development community.

And it's on us to improve ourselves on this, to improve our community. Consciously, in speaking out against it. Or sub-consciously in our words and actions.

I am not asking each one of us to achieve an unreasonable perfectionist standard (as there will be slips of tounges), nor am I criticizing of who you are now.

I am saying this, as someone who has made mistakes as well. To make small incremental personal, mindful changes in us individuals that will allow us to push the community forward.

So ask yourself the man in the mirror? Will you make that change?

To improve the community around you. In encouraging the sharing of knowledge (as trivial as it may seem to you, or even me). Or to share such knowledge yourself.

I have seen similar things happen to other articles/tweets, anything I can do to help?

Instead of fighting head on, and "feeding the trolls".

In cases of unconstructive criticism (eg. worse benchmark), in place of the author, asked politely

What do you mean by _____, how could the content be improved on?

This gives the individual, a chance to clarify as they may not always mean harm intentionally, sometimes it could simply be words being lost in translation.

Just keep in mind to remain respectful, constructive and clear to defuse any tension

For really harsh comments or personal attacks, it might be better to reply to the comment, or author, while ignoring the bully. To let them know that there are others who appreciated their work. While lightly pointing at the criticism.

Personally I found the content useful, regardless of what anyone else says. Thank you

The above is universal regardless of content type (it can be applied outside of the development community).

And finally, for the developer who engages in such criticism, and partly the reason I wrote this article - is so I can point to it in the future for others. As it happens to them.

Personally I think what you are doing is great, regardless of what anyone else says. Thank you. And for the developers who say otherwise, we should be encouraging instead of suppressing our peers.

Are we "developers" gatekeeping "knowledge" from our juniors and peers? 🤦

Eugene Cheah ・ Jun 5 '19 ・ 8 min read

#discuss #beginners #motivation

Keep in mind while doing any of the above, as you run the risk of diverting the critical comment from the author and onto yourself. If it gets personal on you, do not feed into it. Be strong and ignore it.

Know you have done a part in letting the content creator, know that the criticism is not the only voice there. And as an observer to the receiving end, even if they end up in silence, I will say it helps go a long way in knowing there was someone there.

For all the unsung heroes, who did so. Thank you.

Keep doing your best!

To my co-founder, even if you face a double standard in your work previously, or the triple standards in investors as you fundraise presently, or the cruelty of the internet as you write content.

To all the other working moms, single moms, LGBTQ, and other minority groups.

keep on coding
keep on improving
keep on writing
keep on doing, the various great things you are working on
do not let the criticism suppress you
push that glass ceiling
and be great at what you do

Peace 🖖

Additional advice from comments

Also, consider reading up on recurse.com/social-rules.

Tim Downey • Jun 6 '19

Thanks for writing up this post @picocreator !

Along these lines, I am a big fan of the Recurse Center's social rules -- particularly in this case the one about "no feigning surprise." Their explanation of this:

Feigned surprise is when you act surprised when someone doesn’t know something. Responding with surprise in this situation makes people feel bad for not knowing things and less likely to ask questions in the future, which makes it harder for them to learn.

No feigning surprise isn’t a great name. When someone acts surprised when you don’t know something, it doesn’t matter whether they’re pretending to be surprised or actually surprised. The effect is the same: the next time you have a question, you’re more likely to keep your mouth shut. An accurate name for this rule would be no acting surprised when someone doesn’t know something, but it’s a mouthful, and at this point, the current name has stuck.

Feigning (or actually being) surprised is definitely not as mean spirited as some of the examples you referenced, but it can still discourage folks that are new to an area from speaking up or reaching out for help. Just wanted to note this as well since I think it's pretty easy for (otherwise well-intentioned) people to do this without meaning to.

And understand the difference between passive/active gate-keeping

K • Jun 5 '19

I think the problem is two-fold.

One part is the active gate-keeping. People running around telling everyone they or the tools they use aren't good enough.

How can you use PHP when there is Java? How Java when there is C#? Why switch to JavaScript when PHP finally became a real programming language?

Even my programming techniques professor said JavaScript was a toy and nothing compared to Java.

People shitting on each others' work for all kind of senseless reasons instead of helping each other out. That needs to stop and I have the feeling that more women and minorities in the industry will just lead to that. CoCs are spreading like a wildfire and people become generally kinder. The few old-school uber-nerds I saw here on dev.to didn't stay for long.

On the other hand, we have passive gate-keeping or simply ignorance. I guess that is what you're talking about. This can have many reasons and I can only talk about the ones I encountered.

I often had the impression I'm a bad-to-mediocre developer, so I didn't value most of the stuff I knew and this lead me to think I was one of the last in the industry to learn stuff. Took me a year to understand functions, took me a few months to understand closures, took me another year to understand monads, etc. I was always a slow learner, swimming with 9, biking with 14, so I guess that's where the impression came from that everyone else already knew the stuff I just learned.

I also had to work with many of such old-school uber-nerds who choose tech for projects and generally acted like they had it all figured out. Took me a few years of freelancing and blogging to find out most of them are just talking big and there are a whole bunch of people out there who don't know half as much as I do and would love to work with or learn from me.

History sidetrack

For those interested in the accuracy of the yearly figures used above.

1991 : HTTP protocol 0.9 was formalised
1975 : The rise of portable computer such as SCAMP / IBM 5100
1958 : Fortran/LISP, the predecessor to most modern programming languages.
1842 : Ada Lovelace, published the first known computer program
300 BC : Herophilos, the first greek anatomist to push scientific based medicine
3600 BC : Megalithic Temples of Malta, the oldest known free-standing structure on earth, ie not carved into a mountain

I have been sitting on this piece for some time, it is intentionally written in a way to not blame individuals for their past action, but to encourage them to reflect back on how to do better.

As writing is hardly my biggest strength, and I am sure my approach to this topic may be flawed as well. Any discussion, for similar experiences on this issue, either to encourage others, or to suggest other possible ideas, or even amendments that should be made to this article. Will be gladly appreciated.

Latest comments (38)

Frank Font • Mar 30 '20

Sometimes personal attacks (or unkind ridicule of our work) comes from a place of weakness. When I'm on the receiving end I try to empathise on how their life experience may have shaped them for this moment and then look for common ground on acknowledging what I can take from the insulting criticism to improve.

Jason C. McDonald • Jan 28 '20 • Edited

Thank you so much for writing this!

I only want to add one thing:

I can generally agree with "don't feed the trolls," but I've found there are circumstances in which they need to be addressed head on. The Jon Somnez debacle on Twitter is an excellent example.

That said, I'll slap a huge "don't try this at home" label on it, as it has taken me about a decade of forum moderation and IRC experience to get to this point. If you're going to take on a troll, you have to make sure...

You initially address them in a manner that will account for honest mistakes and general social inexperience. (You mentioned this, and you're right on.)
You are confident you can rhetorically paralyze them in a short span of time; the goal is to ultimately defuse the situation, sending a clear message that "this behavior is not tolerated here." (Formal debate experience and college communication courses really help here.)

The trouble with everybody ignoring a troll is that it sends a message that their toxicity is somehow a valid, protected perspective that is protected under "tolerance". Never tolerate toxicity. Trolls are bullies, and without fail, bullies are cowards. This is why #2 above is so important: trolls don't really put much effort into thought, so if they can be rhetorically paralyzed, they'll ultimately flee a community. It sucks the fun out of trolling for them. They enjoy an argument, but not a public loss.

Alternatively, if the troll doesn't flee, they will in the least be forced into exposing themselves as irrationally aggressive (versus their preferred subtle passive-aggressivity), at which point any somewhat healthy community (and its moderators) will have the evidence necessary to defestrate said troll.

Like I said, it's taken over a decade for me to develop the rhetorical skills to incapacitate a troll. I have some natural proficiency at rhetorical combat, but I'd still say that skill is 90% practice. Until you have been able to put in that time, it's best to leave the trolls alone.

Matthieu Cneude • Jan 22 '20

Thanks a lot for this article. You summarized what I think for a long time now. The way we pass our knowledge to the next generation of developer is really important to me, because these developers will shape the world of tomorrow. I'm convinced of that.

First, I would like to come back to this statement:

"As a result, the technology we learn seems to be constantly changing, with little in the way of a stable (think 12+ years) long term standard for anything."

I think this is a common conception and not totally true: the "first principle" of our craft doesn't change that much. We think it does because we constantly rediscover things, since we have a poor knowledge of the history of our industry.

When I say first principles, I speak about general logic and problem solving skills, programming paradigms, everything which help you adapt to new problems, high level languages and frameworks. I believe that learning these first principles for a developer with some experience is essential. For the beginner, it might be boring and discouraging.

In short, the capacity of somebody to adapt and learn should be more rewarded than his raw knowledge.

That said, I agree with the article in general. I wrote something similar some time ago, for those interested: thevaluable.dev/development-easy-j...

How many time after an interview I heard some stuff like: "This guy don't know how a promise work in JavaScript, he's not a senior developer". The same developer could be insanely good to many other things, nobody will know it. This is wrong.

Scott Simontis • Jun 26 '19

As someone who was trained in a more "disciplined profession" as am Emergency Medical Technician, I would not get your hopes up about things becoming more logical and evidence-based over time. It's still disturbing to me how much of medicine was luck...someone lives or dies because you have a random hunch you can't explain to order some atypical lab work. Even the curriculum for EMTs, featured a ton of recommendations and skills that science demonstrated was at best ineffective and worst-case actually reducing the odds of survival (example: spinal immobilization and backboarding suspected spinal injuries). Becoming a good EMT had a ton to do with fortune; if your partner wasn't burnt out, cynical and in general just not a joy to spend 12 hours with, you would miss out on a lot of knowledge and find yourself developing some of the same negative beliefs.

Professionals are a product of their environment. Toxic organizations breed toxic leaders of tomorrow.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 26 '19 • Edited

High five there, as a fellow EMT. Not an active one - but still go for my recertification every 2 years.

I think I get what you mean, regarding procedures changing - at times it's small and incremental - but when you have a gap of 2 years before recertification. These small changes add up (and improve survival rates, according to science and data!).

So it was, for lack of better words, interesting experience for me to be fighting against muscle memory at times, haha. (What was drilled into your head to help others, does the opposite!)

Becoming a good EMT had a ton to do with fortune;
...
Professionals are a product of their environment. Toxic organizations breed toxic leaders of tomorrow.

Completely agree!

Sidetrack: I presume you're referring to - jems.com/articles/print/volume-40/... regarding changes to spinal management.

Scott Simontis • Jun 26 '19

It's weird when you talk to paramedics outside of the US. My best friend used to be an Australian paramedic and they don't backboard at all...they basically have a form-fitting inflatable matress for lack of a better description so the patient sinks in and isn't moving around a lot (the amount of time a patient spends backboarded once at the hospital can produce further complications).

In 2013, I had instructors telling me to go for a jugular IV in critical situations even though we had IO lines available. I guess some people are very comfortable in their old-school ways.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 27 '19 • Edited

As someone who was trained in a more "disciplined profession" as am Emergency Medical Technician, I would not get your hopes up about things becoming more logical and evidence-based over time.

In a sense, you are really proving your point on culture is still a large part of how things will run. We can be in an industry with over a thousand year worth of data, and still fall back to instincts.

In 2013, I had instructors telling me to go for a jugular IV in critical situations even though we had IO lines available.

This is personally very terrifying to hear, I have heard similar stories on how EMT in US differs greatly from state to state (let alone another country).

In Singapore (where I am at) we are told the opposite to never attempt such a procedure on-site unless it's an extreme last resort (no valid IV on hands and legs) with no other means of evac. Making such a procedure theoretical, instead of practical.

Because we are a small island, we are pretty much 15 minutes away from any hospital on any part of the island. There is always an evac route. So god forbid if there is ever a large disaster which turns that theory into practice. Only seen jugular IV done in ER once, and never on route.

Scott Simontis • Jun 30 '19

We did a lot to standardize things over the past 5 years or so. They changed the curriculum into a national standard, as states had some very unique systems to cope with logistical challenges. There has always been EMT-Basic, EMT-Intermediate and Paramedic, but states used to have a lot of freedom to define those. In Montana, where there are counties that are 600 square miles and all volunteer, Basics could get training to intubate or do IVs because they didn't have resources to train paramedics. Now Basics are EMTs, Intermediates are Advanced EMTs, and Paramedics are still Paramedics.

It's sad how much of our system is dominated by profit. The provider I used to work for claimed they couldn't meet their contractually obligated response times without a $10 million grant (keep inb mind they bid on this contract, so they knew exactly what they were getting into). The city's main EMT service said their studies showed meeting the goal was possible without any additional funding, so the private company stopped 911 service over a weekend and forced the city to take over 60 square miles of coverage. The sickening part is that they kept all their staff in the area to continue running private facility transfer calls because they were making money off of those.

Didn't expect so many other EMT developers on here, thank you all for your service!

Eugene Cheah • Jun 30 '19 • Edited

We did a lot to standardize things over the past 5 years or so.

That's awesome to hear

It's sad how much of our system is dominated by profit.

A sad truth, of human greed on every system we touch - regardless of industry

the private company stopped 911 service over a weekend and forced the city to take over 60 square miles of coverage

This is literally taking hostage of lives 😞

Didn't expect so many other EMT developers on here, thank you all for your service!

I think it actually makes sense, they have much overlap in core skill sets in my opinion.

But they have a huge difference in pay (hence why I believe the switch makes sense to many). Did a long tweet thread on this before, on how those in the medical profession deserve a better salary.

PicoCreator

@picocreator

@colmmacc By the nature of their job, will have honed strong core skill sets that I look for in hiring a programmer.

🤔 Logical deductive thinking and planning
🔧 Resourcefulness to improvise around a problem
👂 Communication !!

They even suffer similar problems, eg: imposter syndrome..

06:22 AM - 27 Apr 2019

0 0

PicoCreator

@picocreator

@colmmacc 🐛 If you think debugging logical computer code is hard...
🏃‍♀️ Their job is to debug a messy legacy code base of a human body, that vaguely follows the standard we somehow agreed on, but never ever follows it. With random custom patches of undocumented code in individual instances

06:22 AM - 27 Apr 2019

0 1

PS: its a long tweet thread, so click on it to view the full thing.

Fagner Brack • Jun 9 '19

Great post

Sam Fisher • Jun 6 '19

Isn’t it obvious that (programmers are jerks who love to feel smarter than you)? Are you a (n00b who I get to feel smarter than)? Never write such articles again.

Just Kidding! This was an absolutely fantastic read that I hope to apply wherever possible moving forward.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 7 '19

Having one more person, to help on this behavior. Makes this article: worth it!

Dennis Mohan • Jun 6 '19

First thing that popped to mind with the concat vs push was similar to your first reaction. This should be some basic comp sci, so it's somewhat surprising people aren't aware.

Interesting write up and probably something I can be more conscious about. Sometimes even very knowledgeable people will misunderstand certain implementation details. These mistakes can happen to anyone, and code reviews could/should be used to question all things. Its supposed serve as a medium for constructive criticism and learning. Unfortunately, all to often I see people looking at code reviews and PRs as a chore to get over with.

On a side note, I'm curious if you run into cases like this more with informal training/education vs a more formal comp sci degree.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 10 '19 • Edited

Unfortunately, all too often I see people looking at code reviews and PRs as a chore to get over with.

Sadly very true, due to various constraints

On a side note, I'm curious if you run into cases like this more with informal training/education vs a more formal comp sci degree.

I would say, it really depends on the company culture, maturity of product, and/or process.

Personally, I will admit that even I would make such a "performance issue" and would let it be approved in a PR. I would comment on it, but I will not force it. Personally, I run by the statement...

premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.
~ Donald Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming)

Something I learned, first hand. Is that in the process of creating an application where everyone has strong formal education, is that we can end up endless chasing for O(1) or O(n). It can be a huge time sink, especially on more complex problems.

Because until you have real data and real use cases: sometimes counter-intuitively when n is a small number, u can have O(n^2) performing faster than the O(n) solutions.

Personally, I have spent time on a team, which did a whole 2 weeks on changing a system from O(n^2) to O(n), only to revert it back after launch a month later. Because it was much slower (oversimplifying the problem, the O(n^2) had cachable steps in between, while the O(n) did not.

Since then, learning the hard way, for new features I run by the following in sequence.

Is it under <500ms? (For API calls for example)?
If not why?, is it a quick fix using cache?, is it good enough for now to ship (UI loading bars, etc)?
Do we have actual use case data?
How do we make it better then?

Internally we are constantly monitoring our user flows, and looking into areas to improve based on actual usage. Which is precisely how this whole "concat" vs "push" came about, as it was detected in our monitoring process.

It's also something that can happen in not so obvious ways for even a skilled team.

function addCustomObjX( inArray, objX ) {
    // ... does some obj processing
    return inArray.concat(objX)
}

The above would be approved as a merge request. Because if anything its safer to assume one should never modify the input array. If a function does so, it is required for the developer, to do the additional step of commenting and documenting so due to the potential unintended side effect.

What was not predicted (or even in the scope) of the above function was that the resulting usage was ...

while( some condition is true ) {
    // ... does some complex stuff
    domArray = addCustomObjX( domArray, objX )
}

Which caused the huge performance hit! - and it's ok because all we needed to do then next, was make the slight change and document it.

/** 
 * [Original comments]
 *
 * Note: This modifys the input array, and returns it. The developer is expected to 
 * clone the input array if they expect it to be unmodified.
 **/
function addCustomObjX( inArray, objX ) {
    // ... does some obj processing
    return inArray.concat(objX)
}

Katie Adams • Jun 6 '19

This is an absolutely fabulous article and I'm so grateful to you for writing it. You're incredibly self-aware both as a programmer who has previously made these comments and as a man aware of his privilege. It's wonderfully refreshing. However, as is often the case, the people who need to read this sort of thing will likely not do so. What advice would you give to somebody who hears this sort of comment? How can we stand up for our own knowledge (or lack thereof)? What can we say to a 'bro-grammer' to make them aware of their damaging effect?

Eugene Cheah • Jun 6 '19 • Edited

If challenged directly in person (while lacking the context), I would suggest something like the following.

Everyone has moments, where they are lost, confused, and needs help learning something new. And for some of us, it is now.

The key thing is to avoid "you" or "me" and to generalize it, to normalize the feeling of being lost.

As this feeling is universal for all individuals. (Personally, a non-programming example would be kicking a football in soccer).

Naturally, this takes incredible courage. And personally as an introvert, before I built my skills and experience, it can be terrifying to make a stand. And I would consider myself lucky. As such I understand such action is not for everyone.

Which is why I feel it is more on those within the community or the workplace. Those in between "senior" and "junior", the majority in most workplace, and have gone through the hurdles. To step in, and make the stand above, when they see it applied to others.

A situation that I understand not everyone would be lucky enough to be in.

Alternative: Find a safe space to ask such questions

Look outside your current workplace.

A huge shout out (in Singapore) is for junior dev community.
For those in other areas, try searching meetup.com for the keyword JuniorDev to find fellow peers who are struggling, and mentors willing to help.

And if all else fail - reach out to the nearest JuniorDev from your location, and ask them if they know anyone in your area who is willing to provide mentorship. And finally the internet itself

Mentorship Resources

Jess Lee ・ Jul 19 '18 ・ 1 min read

#mentorship #communication #career #advice

However, as is often the case, the people who need to read this sort of thing will likely not do so.

I really wish I have a simple answer to this. Especially on those within the extremes.

The way I feel about it personally is there is a spectrum of those who are being inclusive and supportive of others, to outright hostility. And everyone else in between, who is the majority.

And as naive as it sounds, it is my wish that through highlighting this to those around me, through articles like these as it gets shared to them. That it can help make those in-between slightly more inclusive and supportive of others.

Just as how "bro-grammer" culture is normalized in several places. The same is possible to normalize a supportive and inclusive culture. One workplace, one community at a time.

I hope the above helps!

Katie Adams • Jun 7 '19

Fab response. Really helpful, thank you. I love the idea of normalising the language used to express the problem - so thoughtful!

Anton • Jun 6 '19 • Edited

You look at this in a bubble.

What if that senior was just rejected by another girl. He is just being a jerk in places where he can be a jerk. In others words he is just getting out his frustration in an aggressive form.

By the way, I started out my comment wrong. Instead of excluding I should added to what you said. Like in improv with an "and" exercise.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 6 '19 • Edited

If so, especially if it is someone I know in person.

I would want to treat him to a beer (or anything else culturally appropriate if one does not drink alcohol), to hear out the frustration. And if it's not enough, play some board games.

To let him/her know, there are other healthier ways to let out that frustration, with friends. And not be a jerk at the same time.

Jason • Jun 6 '19

As the junior developer trying to negotiate and navigate the waters of where can I go for help, this article was a wonderful read. I haven't personally experienced the feign surprise. I have, however, gotten the cold, superior brush-off. 'if you don't know that then you shouldn't be calling yourself a developer.' 'If you don't know x then I can hardly be expected to explain y.'

I avoid stack overflow for those very reasons. Unfortunately it has served to slow me down, as I am now resorting to pouring through my books or the countless sites for one specific fix. And when you aren't even sure what to ask to fix your problem, then Google will fail you. And taking that sort of question to stack or forums is guaranteed to bring the 'we have no time for such trivialities' crowd of responses. Sadly, I have honestly gotten those responses above. Almost word for word.

So thank you!

Kindest regards,

Jason Blackstone

Tim Downey • Jun 6 '19

Thanks for writing up this post @picocreator !

Along these lines, I am a big fan of the Recurse Center's social rules -- particularly in this case the one about "no feigning surprise." Their explanation of this:

Feigned surprise is when you act surprised when someone doesn’t know something. Responding with surprise in this situation makes people feel bad for not knowing things and less likely to ask questions in the future, which makes it harder for them to learn.

No feigning surprise isn’t a great name. When someone acts surprised when you don’t know something, it doesn’t matter whether they’re pretending to be surprised or actually surprised. The effect is the same: the next time you have a question, you’re more likely to keep your mouth shut. An accurate name for this rule would be no acting surprised when someone doesn’t know something, but it’s a mouthful, and at this point, the current name has stuck.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 10 '19

Really like the Recurse Center's social rules, wish I knew about it earlier.

I embedded your whole comment to the end of the article to highlight it much better!

lagerenas • Jun 5 '19

This is a great article. You said that you are not a great writer but I disagree. You found a good balance of entertaining images to pair with this important topic. The tone of your words is perfect for an open dialogue free of blame.

Tanel Liiv • Jun 5 '19

There is no such thing as "javascript jvm". JVM is Java Virtual Machine, a name for a specific virtual machine meant to run Java bytecode. Javascript has specific VMs - eg. SpiderMonkey and V8. Or just call it a "javascript vm".

Eugene Cheah • Jun 6 '19

Thanks! I changed it to "javascript engine" to avoid confusion

Memory is a bit foggy - but I do believe the original line was more like "Doesn't the javascript engine, automatically optimize such execution, like the Java JVM?"

Edited for clarity =)

Zeth Schlenker • Jun 5 '19

Wonderful article.

I struggle with this more often than I'm comfortable with. With rapidly changing libraries and approaches to development, it's so easy to sit on a high horse when you know something and someone else doesn't.

This line especially hit me:
"Isn't it very obvious, I doubt it's worth writing"

Man, that simple statement (or thought, even) has the potential to kill any motivation of someone who's riding the "I just learned something new" wave. And that's not cool. We're all trying to make cool dev stuff together, and we all win when people learn new stuff. :)

Eugene Cheah • Jun 6 '19

Keep that "I just learned something new" wave going! Woosh!

And keep on surfing and learning!

K • Jun 5 '19

I think the problem is two-fold.

One part is the active gate-keeping. People running around telling everyone they or the tools they use aren't good enough.

How can you use PHP when there is Java? How Java when there is C#? Why switch to JavaScript when PHP finally became a real programming language?

Even my programming techniques professor said JavaScript was a toy and nothing compared to Java.

On the other hand, we have passive gate-keeping or simply ignorance. I guess that is what you're talking about. This can have many reasons and I can only talk about the ones I encountered.

Eugene Cheah • Jun 6 '19 • Edited

I like the terms active and passive gatekeeping really well. Was trying to make the distinction between the two, but failed to find those exact two words on it.

Active gatekeeping is something that is much more vocal, and easier to identify. Something that a great many wonderful people is talking and working on.

Passive gatekeeping is exactly what I am much more worried about, especially with more and more individuals making their mid-career switch.

These days, the starting line from programming is all over the place, with everyone learning at their own pace. So dun feel bad if you feel like your slow, as long as you are constantly learning and improving. The instinctive subconscious notion of using age as a benchmark for development experience is shattered. Keep going 👍

Passive gatekeeping, is also something much more common in Asian society in certain regions (japan / singapore / etc). While you will find it very hard to find loud vocal sexism or racism, the numbers do not lie (pay scale, high-ranking leadership positions, etc). And by its nature, much harder to talk about.

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DEV Community

Are we "developers" gatekeeping "knowledge" from our juniors and peers? 🤦

Background Context

Javascript Array.push is 945x faster than Array.concat 🤯🤔

Shi Ling ・ May 2 '19 ・ 8 min read

PSA: What is common to you, may not be to another developer. So think twice before suppressing such content.

Bro-grammer? Couldn't we be kinder?

Bro-grammer?

So ask yourself the man in the mirror? Will you make that change?

I have seen similar things happen to other articles/tweets, anything I can do to help?