Developer <3


http://www.theregist...creative_class/


Thought everybody should read this
Some thoughts about the article:

But are coders considered creatives? Nope.
Meh, who gives a damn.

Well, in practical terms, I believe it explains the eagerness with which even the most law-abiding will pirate software – they simply don’t grasp that any effort goes into it, so why should the builders be rewarded?
Bullshit. Movies, music and books are pirated in equal measure. People pirate because it's cheap and they can get away with it.

When the public does engage with IT, it’s generally in conflict – and then they’ll cast around for help from those they consider expert.
IT is poorly understood, but the same holds for the technical details in any field. What makes IT hard is the lack of a tangible product. It's all virtual and abstract. Especially software tools, libraries and frameworks (i.e. with developers as customer) suffer from this as they don't even have a visual end-product.

I’m sure I’m not the only developer who dreads family Christmases for the inevitable slew of requests for help with wireless niggles and errant popups.
Solution: communicate once and for all that you don't do support or have them pay by the hour. Problem solved. Haven't done family software support in years.

Why ask a developer to configure a network? Because outside the coding cabal, all they know is that we do something with computers. But are graphic designers asked to help with the decorating?
The sad thing is that developers have a better feeling for how software ticks and a problem solving mentality. Even when assisting with software they have never seen before they tend to track the problem quickly in comparison to your average joe user. Naturally, this reinforces the idea that people "doing something with computers" can fix any computer related problem.

I bore anyone who’ll listen with my prediction for the ‘next big thing’ - the application of a Kinect-style interface to a smartphone.
It's marginally better than a touch-screen, but tactile feedback is important. I wish people would stop moving away from tactile feedback. This rant springs to mind.

We tell the end consumer: "Look what it does" and because it does it so well, they don't ask: "How does it work?"
In the early days of using cars you needed to understand the inner workings at quite some more detail than you do today. Is that bad? No it's progress. Software should not need to reveal its inner workings.

Girls in bars are not charmed by explanations of object oriented programming – believe me I’ve tried.
Hahahaha :) "Hey babe, shall I explain multiple inheritance to you ;) "

I can see only one possible route out, a way to alert end users to the poor saps doing all the work... Get sloppy. Bubble up some static. Introduce a few cracks, and the façade will fade. It’s not a bug, it’s a cry for attention.
When are the poor saps doing the work ever credited for the end-product? A cry for attention indeed. If I get paid, enjoy my work and people enjoy my software then that is enough of a reward for me. It sounds like the author has...some issues.
 
Interesting reply :)


Don't disagree with any of it really. Except that I nearly always ask "How does it work?". Don't get me wrong, depending on the subject I won't even understand the explaination, but I'm a curious fellow, and a developer


I totally agree with tactile feedback. I even have a mini bluetooth keyboard sat on my desk, that if I get a textmessage on my phone when I'm at home, I'll use that instead of typing on the touchscreen
 
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Don't disagree with any of it really. Except that I nearly always ask "How does it work?". Don't get me wrong, depending on the subject I won't even understand the explaination, but I'm a curious fellow, and a developer

But most people (typical users) don't want an explanation. Developers/computer people tend to be curious about things and want to figure out how everything works. But that's a fairly unique characteristic. Us here on the boards tend to be a bit more technical than typical users.


I needed to do a tiny bit of repair to a shoulder button, and my first thought is "yeeees, I get to open up my Pandora". Most iPad or Android tablet users would never even think of opening up their device; I can't imagine not opening it up.
 
Honestly, when I do work on any piece of software, there's only one thing I want: for the software to be useful (or, in the case of games, enjoyable) to some people. Why should I care if the users understand the work that went into it?
 
I once knew a programmer who dreaded the thought of doing it professionally because he knew he'd never get any real recognition for it. And so he ended up studying in a field that was more involved with the public. Sounds like maybe this guy should have done the same, or maybe he should just stop complaining. And maybe put his massive ego in check.


Almost everything a person does can be deemed "creative" if you look at it in a particular light. But to be "artistic" it has to be something that is considered such by another person. This isn't some objective state of being, it depends on the audience, and some people will find beauty in code. But it's silly to complain if most don't, because most don't feel this way about most other things too. Making a fuss about source code not receiving the same public attention as various paintings or works of music is petty and demeaning to the vast majority of other professions that also don't generate such attention. Not least of all other engineers. The quips against graphics designers sounds particularly insulting.. I'd like to see him try to make a living doing that.


That said, I don't know why he thinks that the common public perceives software as spontaneously existing out of thin air. While lots of praise is directed to big software companies instead of individuals there's still the acknowledgement that some entity is doing actual work. And I agree with Caine that piracy has absolutely nothing to do with how much someone acknowledges or even appreciates or respects developers. I'm sure lots of developers pirate too.


And geez, saying that Jobs' public adoration drove him to drink sounds pretty damn off, even if it's in jest.. I think this guy has some serious self-image problems if he's this angry and envious of public figures..
 
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Making a fuss about source code not receiving the same public attention as various paintings or works of music is petty and demeaning to the vast majority of other professions that also don't generate such attention. Not least of all other engineers.
There's no such profession - Afterall, the sewer systems were always there, right? ;)

The quips against graphics designers sounds particularly insulting..
Did you think? - ah, there's two bits on graphic designers. I thought this bit was quite amusing

But are graphic designers asked to help with the decorating?
I wonder if they are? If not, maybe they should be :)

That said, I don't know why he thinks that the common public perceives software as spontaneously existing out of thin air.
It's quite funny, a few people where I work often ask for "magic" buttons, that do a number of functions automatically for them

Get sloppy. Bubble up some static. Introduce a few cracks, and the façade will fade.
This line rattled me a bit. I'll admit, my code isn't spotless, I think my record for software releases in a single day at work is about 7 (not all bug related, I'll add though), but I will *never* intentionally do a bad job. I don't care how unloved you may be, releasing crap is not going to improve that fact... In fact, you'd probably become more hated, because everything you do is trash
 
Honestly, when I do work on any piece of software, there's only one thing I want: for the software to be useful (or, in the case of games, enjoyable) to some people. Why should I care if the users understand the work that went into it?
On the other hand, I've seen people post on these forums complaining that an application was poorly made and not ready to be uploaded yet. A simple case is "It doesn't automatically load fullscreen? Don't upload things that aren't ready" (not quoting anyone or anything, just a hypothetical situation). So the user sees something that could easily use five more minutes of dev work to make it go, why wouldn't a dev put five more minutes in something? A dev sees hours/days of work, it's time to show some results and gets ripped into cause it's not perfect.


PokerTH took a fair amount of work. Buy another SD card, download Debian for the Pandora (actually, see if it cross compiles or compiles native first), install or compile all the necessary libraries, and then try to completely compile PokerTH. Actual CPU time? PokerTH was probably on the scope of 12+ hours. Plus realizing make stopped as it needed some additional boost libraries. Or realizing that GCC was crashing because it ran out of memory. So you can't just let it build, you have to babysit it. Then once it works, find all the necessary libraries packaging them up and ship. And that doesn't include the time needed to learn about how QT does it's layouts, compile the 4.7 QT layout manager, and then tweak the layout, build (for PokerTH, the actual view of the board can't be seen that I know of in the QT layout manager), see results, repeat.


So after about a week's worth of work, when a user says "why can't it do X", I can understand how some developers get frustrated with users who just want a simple tweak, how hard can that be, right? (Again, this isn't a rant on the PokerTH thread, those guys have been supportive. But this is just a typical example of how something that can seem really simple from a user's perspective (PokerTH, simple graphics, port should be a cakewalk) can be quite a hassle).


Another case where this can be an issue is in professional software development, after nearing about 80% of a project, the end buyers say "weeeell, this isn't quite what we want, remove this and add that and it'll be perfect. How hard can that be, right?". For engineering, when you're building a bridge, it's obvious what progress you've made. With software? Not always as easy. Which is why project management is such a important field in Software Engineering.
 
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