A rant about developers on the freebsd forum.

Alain De Vos

Alain De Vos

Devs ie developers tend to hide in mailing lists.
But i find it interesting and learning when they once in a while share something on the FreeBSD forum.
It learns me a bit what is happening behind the scenes and the curtains.
I will never be a developer ,read i'm to stupid, but devs have my respect.
 
Alain De Vos said:
I will never be a developer ,read i'm to stupid, but devs have my respect.
Click to expand...
I am not a developer either but I am pretty sure becoming one is not only about being smart (you seem smart, btw.), but more about making it a genuine goal. For example, there is this great book “FreeBSD Device Drivers” by Joseph Kong; or the deep end: “The Design and Implementation of FreeBSD”.

Other than that, you can also become a Developer by becoming a Ports Maintainer. (Which is a route I am planning to go). Correct me if I am wrong.
 
How exactly is this a rant?
Nobody is hiding in the mailing lists. You can read any message sent to the mailing lists without participating in any way: https://mail-archive.freebsd.org/mail/

Some of us don't usually hang around here on this forum because the purpose of this forum is to provide a support platform for users.
Furthermore, the signal-to-noise ratio is just bad here (at least from a developer's perspective) because some members just post too much crap ;)
 
Alain De Vos said:
Devs ie developers tend to hide in mailing lists.
But i find it interesting and learning when they once in a while share something on the FreeBSD forum.
It learns me a bit what is happening behind the scenes and the curtains.
I will never be a developer ,read i'm to stupid, but devs have my respect.
Click to expand...
What!? no rant against us coding monkeys?

I started as a pager monkey administering UNIX and networks many years ago, but only because that what the recuiters kept throwing at me. Finally I put my foot down and was eventually taken seriously as a coder, then as a systems architect, then focusing more on embedded and systems for applied engineering. I lurk on the forums because as a systems designer I need to try to be well versed across a variety of OS domains...and of course because everyone is entitled to my opinion. ;)
 
jbo said:
Furthermore, the signal-to-noise ratio is just bad here (at least from a developer's perspective) because some members just post too much crap ;)
Click to expand...

Trust me...it's not bad here...jump over to the linux side sometime. I come here becaause there does exist a somewhat more professional demeanor, while still having a bit of fun.
 
Alain De Vos said:
developers tend to hide in mailing lists.
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I think this depends on when you got started using/developing on computers. Us old timers are used to mailing lists! There was also Usenet but that kind of fell apart once there was a gateway to/from AOL and then spam overwhelmed it. Forums came about after 1993 (there were BBS before then but AFAIK they were not used by most unix developers). And now younger people use more instant messaging!

Even if you are not a developer, it is perfectly fine to join mailing lists, read what people write, ask questions & learn, There will just be much less (tolerance for) chit-chat.

I have observed that FreeBSD mailing lists seem to get far less traffic these days but this seems to be a general phenomenon with mailing lists. It is what it is!
 
jbo said:
How exactly is this a rant?
Nobody is hiding in the mailing lists. You can read any message sent to the mailing lists without participating in any way: https://mail-archive.freebsd.org/mail/
Click to expand...

Another view, differently formatted and indexed and more often referenced is
https://lists.freebsd.org/

jbo said:
Some of us don't usually hang around here on this forum because the purpose of this forum is to provide a support platform for users.
Click to expand...

There are usually plenty of cluey people here, more than I'd expected after almost 20 years on a dozen lists. Not that I was a developer, just an insatiably curious sysop.

jbo said:
Furthermore, the signal-to-noise ratio is just bad here (at least from a developer's perspective) because some members just post too much crap ;)
Click to expand...

Same can be said of e.g. questions@freebsd.org but again enough dedicated people will let appropriate developers know when their expertise is needed.

Sadly for me but not devs, some once useful lists are now just full of PR tickets, with little discussion. PRs can be excellent, or where good ideas go to die ...

My 2c, not worth a jellybean these days.
 
The HTML forums are not fast enough. Every day hundreds of e-mails come in, and are filtered in different categories looking for trouble. Please don't ask developers for more burden to be active on forums :-) But mentions of developers work great, when you need their attention. My five cents for today :-)
 
As a not-freebsd developer, I would not want people who are on this forum to have easy access to my attention, including myself. It's fine.
 
As a "Rant" I give this a 1 out of 10. Not enough vitriol.
;)
Mailing lists. One needs to follow the right ones. There are a lot of fine-grained lists that have low volume because not too many people are interested in following it. Something freebsd-questions you get more input from others, but it's fairly active but not usually developers involved. Ones I've found useful are freebsd-hackers (good technical discussions), freebsd-arch (technical and process stuff) freebsd-security. freebsd-current and freebsd-stable often have a lot of the commit messages.

I agree with both hselasky@ and cracauer@ above; mention them if it's their area of concern (following the mailing lists will help you figure that out) and when they get a chance to read and think about it, they can respond.

But make sure you do you homework. Don't say "my car won't start, why?" Say "Car won't start, I've verified that I have fuel getting to the engine, have spark at the cylinder, no error codes on the computer, cranks over fine but doesn't start. What should I look at next?"

The first form will get you "RTFM" answers, the second will get you more targeted answers like man(5) distributor
 
Alain De Vos said:
Devs ie developers tend to hide in mailing lists.
But i find it interesting and learning when they once in a while share something on the FreeBSD forum.
It learns me a bit what is happening behind the scenes and the curtains.
I will never be a developer ,read i'm to stupid, but devs have my respect.
Click to expand...
I was a developer for about 11 years and it's not about intelligence but about a desire to develop and a certain creativity. I hated it and was very happy to do anything else, but it was not for me. Not to say developers aren't intelligent but it takes a certain person to do it. Just like my job (penetration tester), it takes a certain mentality to be effective. I too find it interesting when they chime in here because they present viewpoints we rarely get to see.

I am quite sure you are not stupid or you wouldn't be here :)
 
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Sevendogsbsd said:
I was a developer for about 11 years and it's not about intelligence but about a desire to develop and a certain creativity. I hated it and was very happy to do anything else, but it was not for me. Not to say developers aren't intelligent but it takes a certain person to do it. Just like my job (penetration tester), it takes a certain mentality to be effective. I too find it interesting when they chime in here because they present viewpoints we rarely get to see.

I am quite sure you are not stupid or you wouldn't be here :)
Click to expand...
Developers aren't allowed to be creative anymore. Somewhere along the line (especially application programming) the field turned into assembly line work. In large part I've been able to avoid the stupidity by being more of a systems designer and less of an apps programmer. The marketers and bean counters decided that software should follow a "process" that hinders productivity, minimizes the contribution or importance of any individual contributor, and gives them pretty graphs to incorrectly quantify work. I won't work in any shop where they push agile or continuous integration policies. they don't map well to the kind of work I do: managing subject matter experts in R&D. Same can be said for locked down dev environments. See my poll under off-topic. If we can't control our dev environment/machines our creativity and productivity drops to near zero.
 
kent_dorfman766 said:
Developers aren't allowed to be creative anymore. Somewhere along the line (especially application programming) the field turned into assembly line work. In large part I've been able to avoid the stupidity by being more of a systems designer and less of an apps programmer. The marketers and bean counters decided that software should follow a "process" that hinders productivity, minimizes the contribution or importance of any individual contributor, and gives them pretty graphs to incorrectly quantify work. I won't work in any shop where they push agile or continuous integration policies. they don't map well to the kind of work I do: managing subject matter experts in R&D. Same can be said for locked down dev environments. See my poll under off-topic. If we can't control our dev environment/machines our creativity and productivity drops to near zero.
Click to expand...
What can you expect from a crowd of devs who are not on the same page about what needs to be done, and how to do it? One dev wants to program in C, the next guy wants to program in Scala or Ruby, the next dev wants to use subversion (while everyone else is on git), the next one is an Apple fanboi who refuses to use anything else... DevOps is a mess.

Anything useful (think forum software, Git, LibreOffice) is pretty big, and requires coordination between developers. Somebody needs to put in the effort for that coordination, or else it won't happen, we'll all just sit in our caves, bang away at our keyboards, and snap at people who disagree with our approach to coding. "MY APPROACH IS CORRECT ONE, EVERYONE ELSE IS FLAT OUT WRONG" won't win you any eyeballs for your code.
 
astyle said:
What can you expect from a crowd of devs who are not on the same page about what needs to be done, and how to do it?
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I do agree that a formal decision needs to be made. Only if that decision is "Microsoft is the only way" due to inertia do I have a slight concern.

Luckily if you are working for a decent company and the right people are making the decisions, then this problem simply doesn't happen.
 
Sevendogsbsd said:
but about a desire to develop and a certain creativity
Click to expand...
The creativity part is good, but is it there always the desire? I find a torture to program without liking it.

When I was bellow 20, I liked to program, the calculator, FORTRAN, to learn some other languages.
Then it took many decades before I began again programming. The idea to be immerse on some code
that do not have any special idea behind it was horrifying.
 
Languages except C or C++ don't make it in general. I find C++ complex , also the porters handbook. Like it's written for knowledgeable persons.
Not only do you need a good knowdlege of shell-scripts, C , make, but also the FreeBSD tooling.
 
The only experience I have coding is for a government employer so there was zero creativity in it. That's not the only reason I didn't like it - frankly I m just not good at it and it frustrated me. I understand the concepts, but I am bad at implementing them. Development did help me in my current work though, so some good did come of it.
 
Without being harsh, governments don't want any creative persons. They like code monkeys.
I worked for the ministry of justice in Belgium, IT-department. And the mindset was execute and don't think.
I worked for a small American company, less then 40 persons, there i could do more my own thing.
The bigger the organisation mostly the higher the walls of administration&paperwork.
 
astyle said:
What can you expect from a crowd of devs who are not on the same page about what needs to be done, and how to do it? One dev wants to program in C, the next guy wants to program in Scala or Ruby, the next dev wants to use subversion (while everyone else is on git), the next one is an Apple fanboi who refuses to use anything else... DevOps is a mess.

Anything useful (think forum software, Git, LibreOffice) is pretty big, and requires coordination between developers. Somebody needs to put in the effort for that coordination, or else it won't happen, we'll all just sit in our caves, bang away at our keyboards, and snap at people who disagree with our approach to coding. "MY APPROACH IS CORRECT ONE, EVERYONE ELSE IS FLAT OUT WRONG" won't win you any eyeballs for your code.
Click to expand...
Not hijack the OP thread, but I think you misunderstand my point. you can't have managers and bean counters running Dev efforts. You need someone who understands and respects what the devs bring to the table (treats them like artists) and who allows them to be creative while focusing their efforts on the end goal. That model is very rare these days in business.
 
For some managers you just have to use alot of meaningless buzz-words.
Like "streamline the business process in an agile way"
 
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