Justin SearlsJul 12, 2023

Remember some of the hot-button issues in tech over the last decade? People angry over the use of the word "passion". The merits of "craftsmanship". Whether the "10x developer" is a myth.

Something connects all of these debates, and nobody's really talking about it. That's why I wrote this essay: https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2023-07-12-the-looming-demise-of-the-10x-developer/

The looming demise of the 10x developer

Tech's most contentious debates end with people talking over each other, but they make way more sense viewed through the lens of inter-generational conflict.

Test Double
Show threadBrian Marick
@searls @cammerman Oddly, I was thinking similarly today, but wondering what it was that distinguished the agile-inventing generation from the previous one. Now I wonder how my generation differs from yours. I have a suspicion that we were too early for the idea that you can get filthy rich as a programmer. Also, we predated nerd culture being mainstreamed (thanks, Star Wars and Marvel, I guess). And we were culturally pre-Reagan, so retained hippy-dippy attitudes..
Jul 13, 2023 at 4:13amWeb
Show threadBrian MarickJul 13, 2023
@searls @cammerman I don’t generally like generational analysis, but the shift to commercial shrink-wrap software was huge. (It made all those methodologists talking about “the maintenance phase” look exceptionally clueless.) And then the shift to the web was similarly huge. There was a book called /Microsoft Secrets/. Did a good job of explaining how MS managed a release cycle that assumed yearly(ish) physical distribution. Got blown out of the water by the web.
Show threadBrian MarickJul 13, 2023
@searls @cammerman There’s so much richness in the recent history of software, so it really pisses me off that, when historians and anthropologists look at software, they spend their time sniffing the panties of the rich industrialists instead of diving into the nitty-gritty of how line workers produced salable artifacts.
Show threadChris AmmermanJul 13, 2023
@marick @searls I think "generation" is maybe a distracting shorthand when what we might mean is just "a trend that lasted for a couple of decades, give or take a few years."
Show threadBrian MarickJul 13, 2023
@cammerman @searls You’re probably right. “Ease of delivery” doesn’t really map well onto a timeline. While shrinkwrap software needed to have big and infrequent deliveries, internal software (like support for traders in financial firms) had at the same time completely different dynamics.