DHH – Programmers should stop celebrating incompetence (2021)

11 points by damethos 1 year ago | 3 comments
  • bob1029 1 year ago
    I don't think we celebrate incompetence. For me it's more about a reduction in expectations and standards driven by external factors.

    If you want to place blame at someone's feet, I would point toward the managerial class that have encouraged the downskilling of talent in favor of having more control - if you only know how to do front end or back end, you need a team to build anything. Full stack developers don't necessarily have this problem, and are harder to slap around as they could leave and build on their own.

    I've caught myself towing the party line regarding how only the most dedicated unicorn 10xers can achieve competence with both parts. I don't actually think this is true though. With a good mentor and proper environment you can make anyone full stack even if they have a normal home life.

    • DowsingSpoon 1 year ago
      This feels like a massive straw man.
      • pixelready 1 year ago
        Agreed. Who is promoting this view? If they are, that’s not the content that’s getting into my internet bubble.

        To me, keyboard dog was always just one half of the “two states of a programmer” meme, with the other half being “I am a digital god” or “I am the one”. It’s a relatable celebration of the agony and the ecstasy of the failure-experiment-breakthrough-epiphany cycle we experience when we do any coding outside of our comfort zone, or have to debug a particularly tricky issue. Every programmer I know immediately vibes with that meme, seniority notwithstanding.