brogrammers + tech becoming cool

fergalr

I just saw this link on a social network:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.html

The article is about the rise of the term 'brogrammer'.
I don't like that term; it might be sarcastic, but its a sexist term; and its just 'meh'.


But what caught my attention is this section:

'A sexier industry'
The evolution of software has played a part in opening up the field to people who haven't necessarily devoted themselves to a computer science degree or spending years hunched over a keyboard.
"Ten years ago, it required somebody who was much more technical," said Steve Spurgat, the CEO of VYou, a New York-based social video site. "When you were writing [code], it was much less abstracted layers where it would take a much longer time to build something that would take a couple of days now."

"I will boldly say that tech is the new music. It's becoming a sexier industry," he said.

Now, I think a lot of real value is being created in software. Even in social.
But that sort of article, on CNN, just rings a lot of alarm bells.


I've noticed a lot of threads, here on this forum, where people have been asking 'how do I get into development' recently. There's seems to be a lot of people in Ireland trying to get into tech.

This is good, in a lot of ways.
I believe in tech; I sort of believe the whole 'software is eating the world' argument


But the alarm bells can't help but ring when I see things like the CNN article, or the over large number of people who are heading towards the tech industry.

I can't help but think 'Winter is coming'.
And that its not going to be pretty when it happens.

Am I wrong? Its just a feeling of course - and the whole tech world is debating whether theres a bubble.

But anyone else in Ireland noticing a lot of people, who would perhaps not normally be attracted to tech jobs, trying to head that direction?

conor.hogan.2

fergalr wrote: »

I can't help but think 'Winter is coming'.
And that its not going to be pretty when it happens.

Am I wrong? Its just a feeling of course - and the whole tech world is debating whether theres a bubble.

But anyone else in Ireland noticing a lot of people, who would perhaps not normally be attracted to tech jobs, trying to head that direction?

There is a bubble but when it pops it will be nowhere near as detrimental to regular IT people especially in Ireland.

The bubble is in Skype being bought for the price it was and even worse the fall of Groupon and the valuation of other trivial startups that have no actual solid backing and yet are getting so hyped that their valuations are ridiculously high and too high to keep stable in any way.

Giblet

I notice this more in the designer mentality, designers who pass themselves off as developers. Using "cool" frameworks, ORM layers, scripts (jQuery and other nonsense), build scripts sourced from places such as HTML5 boilerplate and associated circles of people (Paul Irish and his ilk). I wonder where this ability levels off? Is there a lot of thought to how software is architected anymore, solving real problems when they arise rather than scouring StackOverfow and relying on plugins. Writing software that will last, and is written defensively? I read some articles about the "Brogramming" phenomenon and it basically boiled down to guys watching My Little Pony, listening to Dubstep, and still being huge nerds anyway. More subscribed to fads, less devoted to learning.

conor.hogan.2

Giblet wrote: »

I notice this more in the designer mentality, designers who pass themselves off as developers. Using "cool" frameworks, ORM layers, scripts (jQuery and other nonsense), build scripts sourced from places such as HTML5 boilerplate and associated circles of people (Paul Irish and his ilk). I wonder where this ability levels off? Is there a lot of thought to how software is architected anymore, solving real problems when they arise rather than scouring StackOverfow and relying on plugins. Writing software that will last, and is written defensively? I read some articles about the "Brogramming" phenomenon and it basically boiled down to guys watching My Little Pony, listening to Dubstep, and still being huge nerds anyway. More subscribed to fads, less devoted to learning.

Do not agree in the slightest. JQuery has its place and Paul Irish is great at what he does.

JQuery and his HTML5 boilerplate are tools to make development easier. If you insist on not using them chances are you are wasting time, money and will come out with software that is less useful/secure/etc.

This transfers to everything. Like writing your own SQL by hand instead of using X etc You can do it but in 90%+ cases you do not need to nor should you.

Giblet

Make who's development easier? Mine is fine, thanks. And he doesn't touch security really does he? Most of this stuff is blindly copied and pasted and there is little to no understand of what it does! Sure, look at the amount of trendy sites with pink selection background text! Shows you how much they studied what they were copying! Modernizer was written a few times after someone like David Mark thrashed the **** out of it due to the browser sniffing activities it engaged in. While I agree there is a place for this kind of stuff, it isn't pure development. It's stuff that's been known for years.

conor.hogan.2

Giblet wrote: »

Make who's development easier? Mine is fine, thanks. And he doesn't touch security really does he? Most of this stuff is blindly copied and pasted and there is little to no understand of what it does! Sure, look at the amount of trendy sites with pink selection background text! So's you how much they studied what they were copying!

You may not use the HTML5 boilerplate or JQuery but I can nearly guarantee you use similar libraries in .NET or whatever your current platform of choice is.

He does not I am talking about Libraries/Frameworks in general. In general to make a point about how things like the boilerplate or JQuery are just there to make things easier and this technique has been used for years.

He is good at what he does, if you have little respect for what he does then of course you will not like what he does nor will you have respect for or use it.

Giblet wrote: »

While I agree there is a place for this kind of stuff, it isn't pure development. It's stuff that's been known for years.

How is it not pure development? Do I need to post the "butterfly flaps" XKCD? You can not make blanket statements like that. People can write bad code using JQuery or pure JS or using anything.

Exactly nicely packaged to make development easier like what has been done for years.

He is a "front end developer". He is good at what he does, whether you respect that or not is a different thing altogether.

Giblet

Ok, I had the jQuery discussion before, and it tends to take over a thread, so I won't comment (there is a previous thread about it though). Ok, pure development is probably the wrong term, I'd rather say something like, the higher up the food chain a tool is, the more a developer should know about it, and eventually not require it if it's an over abstraction, or in the case of the aforementioned, overkill for the requirements of the developer. Being able to piece together a website from gleaming snippets from a blog isn't the same as someone who can architect a solution for a business requirement that is elegant and reusable that takes their own personal knowledge into account when it comes to best practices and secure programming (ie: don't rely on a third party unless they've done the work that you already know to be a valid and safe solution). That is where a lot of these "brogrammer" types fall over and reach their plateau.

conor.hogan.2

Giblet wrote: »

Being able to piece together a website from gleaming snippets from a blog isn't the same as someone who can architect a solution for a business requirement that is elegant and reusable that takes their own personal knowledge into account when it comes to best practices and secure programming (ie: don't rely on a third party unless they've done the work that you already know to be a valid and safe solution). That is where a lot of these "brogrammer" types fall over and reach their plateau.

This is wholly different than using JQuery, the HTML5 boilerplate, Guava or Boost.
Having a problem with bad developers who copy/paste code is fine but completely different to people who use JQuery or any other tested library.

Giblet

No different, you are assuming jQuery passed its tests, hell they couldn't get attributes right for 5 years. AGAIN OTHER THREAD! BAD GIBLET!

conor.hogan.2

Last post, you are assuming a bad developer. Which is separate to JQuery. Also the history of JQuery which is separate to the good parts of JQuery today. Every library has good and bad parts.

Giblet

A bad developer? Their API doc examples broke too. This is because they never got the implementation of what they are trying to do (normalise attributes vs properties) in the first place. That's everywhere you use attr or prop, which for a lot of developers is everywhere.

fergalr

It's ok, you guys have set my mind at ease.

These cool kid 'brogrammers' are going to make it as far as their first technical debate, and then quit and never come back.

I'm glad to see things haven't really changed where it counts.

Giblet

Hey, if we reach a bubble of brogrammers that suddenly need replacing, increased grad salaries all round! :P

fergalr

I hear they don't even know everything about databases...

conor.hogan.2

The "brogrammer" thing is a meme with a little bit of a basis in reality anyway.

Creamy Goodness

i only really thought this was a childish immature american thing just like college frats.

please don't tell me it's making its way over here

fergalr

My point isn't so much that its making its way over here.

What I'm really getting at, is that its coming with an influx of a different sort of people into the tech industry. And its coming on foot of a wave of hype about 'tech being sexy' or being an easy place to make a Billion Dollars.

Those are the parts of the article I'm really interested in highlighting.

Because I see a lot of people, who I would guess would not have considered tech, 5 years ago, who are now trying to break into it.
There are even a lot of threads on this forum, about switching to tech.

Some of these I'm sure are great decisions, but some are influenced by bubble thinking.

I'm just wondering if anyone else sees this trend, in Ireland, and if so, what people think will happen here, when the music stops.

Conor.hogan.2, earlier, indicated that Ireland wouldn't be too badly affected by a bubble popping?

I'd be curious what other people think?

conor.hogan.2

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

please don't tell me it's making its way over here

I don't even think it is really over in America either. I think it is just a case of a meme exaggerating the truth and then being blown up and making it into mainstream media.

fergalr wrote: »

Conor.hogan.2, earlier, indicated that Ireland wouldn't be too badly affected by a bubble popping?

I'd be curious what other people think?

So you think there is a bubble in the sense of massive amounts of people becoming Programmers as opposed to a bubble in tech companies valuations?

The reason I think we won't be too badly off is most of the major companies we have here are stable companies and even the startups are not overhyped like in America.

Subjectively I do not see many people getting far into IT without having some interest. Far being the key there.

fergalr

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

So you think there is a bubble in the sense of massive amounts of people becoming Programmers as opposed to a bubble in tech companies valuations?

That is a fair question, and a reasonable distinction to make.
I think the two are heavily interrelated, though.


I find it difficult to understand the impact that 'popular perception' has on the career choices of a large group of people, on aggregate. (I'm talking about the perceptions of the people outside the tech industry.)

During the late 90s, CAO points for CS courses shot up. After the dot com crash, they plummeted. I don't think its over-reaching to see a causal link, there.

I genuinely think the movie 'The Social Network' had an impact on the perception of tech. (That CNN article, which probably has quite a high readership, is along these lines).

I think the successes of Groupon and very recently, the media splash made my Instagram, have spilled out into the popular culture.


So, I think that driven by a (probable) bubble in company valuations, we have more people, especially in a recession here, that see green hills, and pots of gold, in the tech industry.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The reason I think we won't be too badly off is most of the major companies we have here are stable companies and even the startups are not overhyped like in America.

This is an interesting point. You may well be right.

There seems to be a hive of activity in tech startups in Ireland though (at least in dublin) the like of which I haven't seen before. There is also more seed money than I've seen before.

Don't get me wrong - this is excellent to see.
But it is going to suck developers away from those big companies you mentioned, and I wonder, if there is a crash, whether there will be a consequent oversupply of developers. And what will happen to all the new developers who came into the industry, at the peak of the bubble - those people got hit very hard in the last crash.

I don't know - maybe things will be fine here.
Maybe there will be no crash.
I'm curious as to what people see around them.

conor.hogan.2

Instagram, thats the one that was on the tip of my tongue earlier.

There is 100% a bubble in America over the valuations of companies. I do not think we have that here, but I am not up on local startups (I know of one, Haystack out of UCD) and a few that grew into successful stable companies.

I do not know enough of local startups but is there even enough that if they all suddenly crashed would there be an overflow of people looking for jobs?

There is a lot of people getting into it for the money but I don't know how many of them get through their degree and actually go into programming. Some but I can't imagine it is anything like it was during the .Com bubble*.

*From what I have read, I was too young to know of it at the time.

In regards to the American Bubble it seems to be a market Bubble and an actual Bubble, they are all off in their own self-confned world and when it all comes crashing down I don't think it will affect the general economy or the big stable companies.

Odaise Gaelach

The thing about software development that most of these people don't realise is that it's neither cheap nor easy. It's hard. I learned that lesson with several colossal soul-crushing ****-ups over the years. There's a lot of attention to detail and therefore time and expense that has to go into good software. From my own experience in writing C# / Windows Phone 7 or Java / Android code; they're very high-level with lots of gorgeous APIs, but still require a great deal of care and patience and skill to get right.

Though maybe I'm just crap at it.

Colonel Panic

Odaise Gaelach wrote: »

Though maybe I'm just crap at it.

imo, only a good programmer can say this. It's like Catch 22 but that's just my experience.

moycullen14

Colonel Panic wrote: »

imo, only a good programmer can say this. It's like Catch 22 but that's just my experience.

Absolutely. The most dangerous programmer is the arrogant programmer.

dazberry

There was another thread discussing the existance of an IT Bubble in the politics forum recently.

D.

EdanHewittt

Well it's safe to say teenagers these days, and even 20-somethings don't aspire to being (musical) rockstars anymore. They aspire to startup culture, and making a new "Killer App".

I've spoken to startup founders who have 'made it' / broken into niche markets with their product, and they all agree young people today see becoming a Rockstar the last thing on their to-do list.

The Brogrammer Meme was not invented. It was some-one addressing a very real phenomenon where frat-types don't dick around with guitars with their mates anymore, they show off their collection of Meme pictures, and the App they built on top of Twitter's API / Facebook's API.

You only have to watch the Tech-crunch Disrupt videos to see many startups are solely reliant on APIs.

Very few products these days are built from the ground up. Pinterest for example - All AWS. When AWS goes down, so does Pinterest. And Instagram, etc

It seems to make the next Google, or the next Twitter, everything has to be home-brew, and bespoke, and not reliant on services like Rackspace / AWS.

But who am I to say not what to use. By all means use them. But if you're looking for mega-bucks... some oldskool Computer Science might actually *help*

fergalr

EdanHewittt wrote: »

Well it's safe to say teenagers these days, and even 20-somethings don't aspire to being (musical) rockstars anymore. They aspire to startup culture, and making a new "Killer App".

I've spoken to startup founders who have 'made it' / broken into niche markets with their product, and they all agree young people today see becoming a Rockstar the last thing on their to-do list.

The Brogrammer Meme was not invented. It was some-one addressing a very real phenomenon where frat-types don't dick around with guitars with their mates anymore, they show off their collection of Meme pictures, and the App they built on top of Twitter's API / Facebook's API.

You only have to watch the Tech-crunch Disrupt videos to see many startups are solely reliant on APIs.

Very few people wanting to profit from tech build their product from the ground up. Pinterest for example - All AWS. When AWS goes down, so does Pinterest. And Instagram, etc

To make real game-changing, revolutionary products, you have to innovate from the ground up...Everything has to be bespoke. Not reliant on third-party products.

Do you have to build your own microprocessors?
Do you have to build your own advanced civilization, that can construct the technological infrastructure that can build your computers?

Theres definitely a risk to building on someone elses platform/API, as companies are finding out, I certainly wouldn't dispute that.

But I wouldn't extend that as far as saying that you can't make a revolutionary product, without relying on third-party enabling technologies. So Pinterest relies on AWS...
...Facebook relies on the Internet backbone.

We need to have a nuanced view of these issues.

EdanHewittt

fergalr wrote: »

Do you have to build your own microprocessors?
Do you have to build your own advanced civilization, that can construct the technological infrastructure that can build your computers?

Theres definitely a risk to building on someone elses platform/API, as companies are finding out, I certainly wouldn't dispute that.

But I wouldn't extend that as far as saying that you can't make a revolutionary product, without relying on third-party enabling technologies. So Pinterest relies on AWS...
...Facebook relies on the Internet backbone.

We need to have a nuanced view of these issues.

I agree. I was rushing my ideas out there a bit, without thinking about what I was saying.

It's all too very easy to go into 'I am the expert on this' when you're here on boards.ie

But I'm no n00b either.

I've already added my tuppence worth to this thread, and nothing much more needs to be said from me, but I have something else to add:

Personally, I struggle with the abundance of new tech companies, and all the outfits at The Digital Hub, and other tech hotspots around Dublin.

Everyone is making a killing, but they're not changing the landscape. They're not exactly boutique web design companies like nClud who innovate and create new web experiences.

The Digital Hub crowd - They're full of agencies that push out run-of-the-mill websites in this rushed, let's make a quick buck kinda way, and this saddens me.

Don't get me wrong, I like money too But I'm also a hacker. My mindset is different. It works on a different level than your average Dubliner who was spoonfed HTML because it's going to get him a job.

All this comes naturally to me. No effort required. Count me as lucky here, but I don't think its skill these companies should be looking for. It should be passion, and talent.

A bit of a personal rant, but I thought I would get it out there.

fergalr

I love the amount of tech startup activity at the moment; and especially the amount thats going on in Dublin. Its a nice counterpoint to the general recession going on.


But, globally, it seems that starting a tech company, and trying to make a fast buck, without reference to necessarily creating real value, has become 'cool'.


But maybe its just that the landscape has changed, and the fact its so much easier to create and launch an idea, that can scale across many people, now means that technical execution is less valuable, and that the idea, and the user-experience execution, are more valuable.

Maybe the people who seem to you like they aren't creating value, actually are; its just that whats valuable has changed. I personally can't say with certainty - time will tell.

I have to add, theres lots of cool stuff going on in Dublin though - I've see a lot of startup efforts that look interesting and promising.
The other thing is, that even the people who try and fail, will learn, and probably add value to the ecosystem here later.

conor.hogan.2

Companies should not be relying on one hosting service no more than they should have all their servers in one room. That is a problem of specific companies imo.


Startups are fine, they live in their own bubble for the most part. Every now and again something genuinely cool or useful breaks out and I hope more of that starts to happen specifically in Ireland.

What was the last good startup here that had some actual level of use and remained around? (this is an actual question, no sarcasm)

Evil Phil

I think there is a bit of media frenzy myself, and every second start up seems to be doing the new social media breakthrough. Personally I think the social media bubble burst with the Instagram sale, that being said it's not going away. It's just the default behaviour on the web now.

This is like the dot com bubble all over again, people are coming to IT and dev for a lucrative career not realizing it's a vocation that requires a talent for it, and years to develop the skills. These same people starting flocking to finance when the bubble burst. It comes and goes, *brogrammers* are a bit of a fad. It always comes back to geeks.

One thing though, yes people save time using tools to generate their SQL and other code for them. But is that code efficient? How would they know? And if there is a bug in it will they be able to fix it (even know it's there)? I wouldn't trust a coder who doesn't code.

Evil Phil

One last comment on Brogrammers.

jester77

Here is an excellent rant/blog on the current state of startups, pretty spot on imo.

Sparks

Saw "brogrammers", thought "oh feck no".

Saw "they'll hit their first technical debate and get laughed out of it" and thought "you've never worked in the industry, have you? You'll be maintaining their code, mentoring them and training them up for your job (because they'll accept lower pay) for the next decade, is a more likely outcome".

Saw people wondering why people are taking up IT work, and wondered what else someone is going to do when they leave school after the leaving cert for the construction industry, and who now has a wife, kids, mortgage and a skillset in building houses - which isn't exactly a skillset in demand today.

Trojan

I've been having this discussion with my ex- programming lecturer on and off the past few years.

The speed at which a working application can now be put together is orders of magnitude faster than when I graduated 10, 12 years ago - in the days of VB5 & 6, Microsoft Foundation Classes, etc. This is both a good and a bad thing.

For those who have a background in the bowels of machine code, assemblers and C, these tools make life a lot easier - once you make the leap of learning the framework in depth. Another bonus or advantage for the old school background is understanding the history of the development of these frameworks and APIs - if you had to work with the low level code it's a huge advantage in understanding possible weaknesses, and you know why the creators chose to do things in certain ways.

My biggest concern is whether the knowledge of the framework is transferable, as it's not an insignificant investment of time in learning something that is proprietary, and if the particular framework goes out of use, you need to start again.

For those without a background in the low levels, these tools allow them to build stuff that they couldn't otherwise - at any speed. Some will choose to educate themselves in supporting languages. Some won't - and they're the ones who will need support and mentoring and training.

If the APIs and frameworks themselves are unreliable or of poor quality, more people using them should bring more eyeballs, more inspection and testing, and thus increasing quality.

JQuery is a good example - certain issues weren't fixed for 5 years, but show-stopper bugs were fixed quickly, as more and more people started using it. And the bugs that remain are known, so developers work around them. I agree that nothing mission critical should be running on these systems until they have stood some sort of test of time (and if you're running something mission critical in Javascript, you are either a defensive coding expert or a failure).

But the end result should be more software - ranging across the spectrum of quality, and more business opportunities leading to job creation. Rather than viewing this as a lowering of the average software quality, I'd like to think that it will increase the overall amount of high quality software out there, even if there happens to be a lot of low quality there too.

Sparks

You know, I wouldn't mind that being the case Trojan, if those who knew the low-level stuff got paid more than those who need to have the frameworks to do anything...

...thing is, it ain't so Sad truth is that not many coders dig down towards the kernel to try to learn the low-level stuff anymore; low-level stuff seems to have a PR image that looks a lot like Alan Cox, while all the high-level stuff is lauded as being the cool new thing all the kids are doing before their startup is bought by Facebook for eleventy billion dollars. So three guesses what people gravitate towards. And three guesses what gets valued more by people who don't code (ie. the same people who decide on salary levels).

Trojan

That's certainly a pain in the proverbial in the short term, but over the longer term shouldn't market forces correct itself as more and more low-level coders upskill to get the better salaries, thus increasing demand?

(It's the same issue in the web design arena by the way - with "website in a box" type facilities available and first time developers undercutting existing companies with shoddy quality but rock bottom pricing. Sounds like the Market for Lemons.)

jmcc

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

i only really thought this was a childish immature american thing just like college frats.

please don't tell me it's making its way over here

I think it was covered in the Irish Times "technology" section so that will mean that the virus should be confined to a small cafe in the arse-end of Dublin close to the Irish Times office where a bunch of latte-quaffers think they are in OiTee. In other words, utterly irrelevant. Tech has a very unforgiving way of routing around such damage because there's a requirement to keep learning new things and how to use new tools/software. Sometimes I wonder if techies are born rather than being produced by third level courses. There has to be that basic spark that drives the need to know and understand and those who don't have it end up in sales or management. (If what I think is happening, based on some domain drop patterns, is happening, then there's a mini-DotBomb on the way that's going to cull a lot of these brogrammers.)

Regards...jmcc

Sparks

Trojan wrote: »

That's certainly a pain in the proverbial in the short term, but over the longer term shouldn't market forces correct itself as more and more low-level coders upskill to get the better salaries, thus increasing demand?

Not so much; see Ulster Bank for details!