Raise the Hammer
When we're online, we often disagree the most with the people who are just like us.
By Adrian Duyzer
Published June 12, 2009
When the wildly popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft came out a few years ago, I played it for about six months. Like just about every other multiplayer game out there, WoW offers players a faction to join; in WoW's case, either the Horde or the Alliance.
This choice is often arbitrary, although once someone has chosen a particular faction, their friends will often choose the same one so they can play together. But at the time a player joins, they have no particular love for the side they choose or hatred for their faction's enemies.
This soon changes, however, especially on game servers that promote warfare between the factions (so called player-vs-player servers, such as the one I played on).
A raging hatred exists between players on opposite factions that extends out of the game world and onto forums, blogs and so on, where people insult each other, claim the other side has an unfair advantage, etc.
In other words, people who have a ton of things in common, from their frequently similar personal characteristics (young, male, etc.) to their obvious appreciation for the same type of entertainment, spend hours flaming each other as a result of an arbitrary, meaningless choice when they first started playing the game.
As in the world of video games, so in the world of web development. I'm sometimes dismayed by the attitudes expressed by Python programmers towards Ruby programmers, and vice versa.
Don't get me wrong: lots of people from these two communities are perfectly civil towards one another, and some of the tension is simply a healthy competitive rivalry. But that is not always the case, which is weird: after all, both languages are dynamic and cutting-edge, both communities are producing fantastic software - and both communities are generally contemptuous towards people who program in PHP. So what's the problem?
Or check out the massive flamewar on Smashing Magazine because someone had the nerve to suggest that web developers don't need to use Macs.
Five hundred comments (and counting) of Mac users bashing Windows users bashing Mac users, occasionally interspersed by pious Linux users wondering what all the fuss is about.
But all of these people are web developers. Some, of course, are respectful to each other, but others are not: the fact they are speaking to someone who is probably much like them, with the same career and probably many of the same interests, does not matter as much (at least at that moment) as that person's choice of computer.
When we're online, we often disagree the most with the people who are just like us. Is this the result of competition, like the conjured up war between the Horde and the Alliance in World of Warcraft or the pressures of the hyperactive pace of web development?
Or is it a way of insisting that we are unique individuals, even when presented with evidence to the contrary - our peers?
Offline, the situation changes. Put a Ruby programmer and a Python programmer in a room together at a party and they're bound to meet at some point and trigger the kind of endless, arcane-to-normal-people conversation that prompts their wives to suggest leaving.
Put a couple of WoW players into a room at a party - actually, never mind, WoW players don't really leave the house.
There's a simple solution for all of this then: when you deal with people online, treat them the way you treat the people you see every day, in person. Even if they still use PHP. Or they're Horde. You ganking bastards.
This essay was originally posted on Adrian's blog.
By languagesnob (anonymous)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 09:43:59
By self-hating nerd (anonymous)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 10:06:16
By synxer (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 10:43:47
Yes, felt like an open bear-trap when I saw "Even if they still use PHP.".
You can't really have this argument when you're mimicking the same things you're denouncing.
Right tool for the job, regardless of language, OS, etc.
I also posted the SM article. When I saw it, I knew it was gonna bring out the troll in many. :)
By stark raving (anonymous)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 11:21:37
By synxer (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 11:46:19
My preference is not PHP, neither, but it is a powerful language especially when you consider a framework like CodeIgniter.
I do concur with the article. I never really understood why programmers tend to burn bridges with other programmers, whom they should share a great respect with.
It's uncomfortable when one of the guys you're working with has had a prior tiff with some other firm and you end up having to work together on a project. Makes everyone look like a jerk.
Programming involves a lot of logic. Logic and emotion rarely meet on the same street, so what gives?
By Brush and FLOSS (anonymous)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 11:59:46
By synxer (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 13:42:57
Brush and FLOSS wrote:
why IS this site in ASP, anyway?
Five years ago when I started working on it, I had easy access to an IIS webserver and was developing in classic ASP for work at the time.
Back then, Python, Ruby, Common Lisp, Scheme, Scala and so on were still esoteric languages that (almost) no one was using to run web applications; the .Net infrastructure was still young and immature; the JSP infrastructure required you to code in Java; and my opinion at the time was that ASP was marginally less hideous than PHP.
I've started rebuilding the site from scratch in Python (with mod_wsgi on Apache and the awesome, lightweight web.py framework), but time spent doing this eats into the time I can spend doing anything else, including maintaining and improving the current site.
While I was plugging away very slowly on the new design, the current site was languishing, so I decided to change tack and make a number of minor improvements to the current site in the past couple of months.
For me personally, at least, the experience of using the site is a lot less aggravating than it used to be. I've also noticed a recent uptick in the number of people registering, the number of comments and - more importantly - the quality of comments.
There's a decent chance they're connected to the recent improvements in usability.
By synxer (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 15:10:29
I've found Ruby/Python to be fun and easy to grasp. It would be neat to be able to do more Ruby/Python professionally, but most of our clients (especially higher-ups) have specific requirements that usually exclude what they see as "enterprise unfriendly". I don't personally share those views, of course.
Whenever we get a "don't care where it's hosted" client, we like to delve into the fun stuff.
By brodiec (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 15:26:17
I was always confused why, when RTH produces unique much needed content, that Ryan and others were busy re-inventing the content manager wheel. Like how many FLOSS content managers are out there? How awesome is Wordpress? But I digress.
As per the article, yes, familiarity does breed contempt. It's important to be mindful of how the online world brings together people who'd not regularly interact previous to some arbitrary internet epoch. One easy way to remind yourself of that is to axe your WoW account and leave the house.
By z jones (registered)
Posted June 12, 2009 at 17:04:03
By adrian (registered)
Posted June 13, 2009 at 09:19:28