Marco RogersI don't think I'll ever understand the kind of person who says "you MUST fight with me about technology minutia. And if you choose not to, I will block you forever." Like it's such a weird combination of principles.
There are lots of different reasons that my career in tech has been effectively derailed. But first and foremost, I definitely failed to make talking about tech into my entire personality. That has been working against me for a long time. 😂
That's not meant to be a judgment towards people who talk about tech a lot. I used to enjoy talking about it too. Even the minutia. I think what changed for me is that I started to ask where it was leading to. And I couldn't form a coherent answer that mattered to me.
I believe in the promise that tech is meant to enhance human potential and improve human experience. I want to be able to talk about tech in the context of what we are hoping to achieve.
The subtweet (or whatever we're calling it over here) at the top of this thread was referring to a brief exchange about frontend web technology. I'm already on record with my opinion that we've lost our way in the frontend. Most of the conversations are about how to add more complexity in order to make things slightly more convenient for devs. Very few conversations have anything to do with what we hope to create for people.
Chris Hartjes@polotek Just like there are many teachers who hate the students they teach, there are lots of programmers who hate the people who use the stuff they build
Misuse Case@grmpyprogrammer @polotek This is also unfortunately a common attitude in cybersecurity (my field), although less common than it used to be.
My personal opinion is that the way security is implemented in many organizations places a burden on end users that is not only unnecessary but harmful, both to the goals of organizational security and the ability of users to perform their primary jobs.
Ben Judson@polotek I agree with you that building web UIs is most often more complex than it needs to be. But I think a lot of this is driven by design and product incentives to build “premium” experiences that seduce users into conversion, and mostly care about users with high end devices. So much energy is devoted to selling, rather than building a truly useful product.
@shiftingedges yeah blaming other people is the easiest thing to do. Let's just keep doing that.
@polotek heh. We’re all part of a system that has perverse incentives. Dev, product, design are all responding to those. Telling engineers they are selfish not gonna get you where you want to be.
@shiftingedges but blaming people in other roles somehow does? Can you help me understand that?
@polotek I may not have been clear. I’m blaming the incentives. The PMs and designers I have worked with care deeply about building things that help people. So do the engineers. And yet we waste so much time on complex solutions to problems that revolve around short term business growth, and we adopt tools that we think will help us with that.
@shiftingedges I don't think we're going to be aligned here Ben. I'm just no longer interested in this narrative that people "really care" and yet somehow have no real power or agency in the decisions they make. Yes, business incentives are a thing. People also still like for their paychecks to get delivered on time. All of these things matter. But I think people in non-leadership roles happily cede their responsibility for working to reconcile these competing pressures.
Eric McCormick@polotek I nominate "contrabass toot" for the fediverse dictionary.
Eric Newport
Blaise Pabón - controlpl4n3@kethinov @polotek
There should be no shame in recognizing that there are two kinds of developers:
those who like to write code
those who like to build things
The writers are happy to reimplement the same project with subtle changes over and over again. It doesn't really matter to them what the code does.
The builders prefer to solve problems, improve quality and increase layers of abstraction. (think of @simon )
Mike-麥-Mai-v1.618 😎
Florian Schroiff 
Tim Severien
devolute@polotek Fuck yeah. We have to bring it back.
rakoo@polotek
> Very few conversations have anything to do with what we hope to create for people
And unfortunately even fewer conversations start with "what do people want, and why are they not at the decision table". Just like you I've grown a bit tired of always talking about how to best manage complexity and the only thing that does is separate even more those-who-do and those-who-use. There shouldn't be any separation. It was supposed to be a tool for all of us, dammit.
> Very few conversations have anything to do with what we hope to create for people
And unfortunately even fewer conversations start with "what do people want, and why are they not at the decision table". Just like you I've grown a bit tired of always talking about how to best manage complexity and the only thing that does is separate even more those-who-do and those-who-use. There shouldn't be any separation. It was supposed to be a tool for all of us, dammit.
Brandon@polotek HEY come on now you can be tech and human also right? Right?
*crickets*
WTL@polotek Certainly not your loss. People are weird. 🤷🏻
Joël Franušić