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Comment by neurobashing | Hacker News Reader

I'm just skilled labor.

I'm a milling machine operator, except instead of a CNC machine making, idk, table legs, I'm writing a thing to filter some database result based on some user input from a web page.

I am not doing poetry or making hardware dance, I am not doing mathematics (directly anyway). This is a trade. I'm building the small pieces of the bigger things our culture either needs, or sometimes just wants. It's my job and I'm good enough at it that I've gone from almost literal apprentice to lead. I'll work hard, then retire to a farm and never touch another keyboard again.

(jk how else would I do my taxes, I'm not a luddite)

So that's whatever "tribe" I am, I guess.

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I came to the comment section looking for the mercenaries like you, knowing I'd find them, because I knew it was by far the largest group and oddly omitted from the article.

> We self-select into communities of our peers based on these ideals. We use coded language to express these ideals to our peers.

But, maybe most of us actually _don't_do this. We all know of the annoying fetishization of "passion" in programming that alienates the majority and it's getting weirder and weirder to keep ignoring it in the real world.

Tribalism be damned, deep down, most of us are doing this because it's a pretty fun way to keep our families fed and our minds occupied.

People who write about programming in their spare time are people who really like programming. You aren't going to read a blog post by a software 'mercenary' describing their tribe because mercenaries don't work for free.

There are many people in all sorts of 'tribes', but only a few of the tribes wrote blogs.

Yeah, I see plenty of articles on either side of the extreme (that obnoxious "Programming sucks" post comes to mind).

You have a great point. The large mercenary class in the industry is just not as visible because the nature of it creates a non-vocal majority.

Actually, I'm a developer from the second camp:

  I am a hacker. I make hardware dance to my tune.

Why? First of all I enjoy doing things. Understanding the computer, the compiler, how to make use of it more, how to extract more performance from my code while being absolutely correct is making me extremely happy. I feel accomplished. I also apply this knowledge in some scientific applications so, they're not all lost.

OTOH, I don't throw eggs to other so-called tribes or the mercenaries, because We're humans and we're different. We have different reasons. I live in this stuff since C64. Not everyone has to. Some likes poetry, others don't. Some listen to classical, others listen to death metal, rap, whatever. I don't expect everyone to like, understand or endorse what I do. The correct baseline is we're expressing ourselves here, including the mercenaries.

So, as long as you don't throw eggs at me, we're friends. I'd gladly help you with my knowledge and more importantly, I want to learn from you to broaden my horizon and augment my ideas with yours to try, see and do new things.

Tribalism is not inherently bad, the quiet war and fetishization of these tribes are the toxic parts of it. Similarly, being passionate about programming sans the zealotism is not harmful IMHO.

These camps provide a nice foundation and philosophy when used correctly. OTOH, I agree that this is a double edged sword and very sharp one indeed.

Why not discuss further?

Sure, that's good and all makes sense. I am somewhere in the middle of a venn diagram that includes all these tribes, plus mercenaries and many other things that aren't described, as I'm sure many of us are.

I do think it should be discussed further but my original point was that we may be missing out on discussing the unseen majority as much as we do these passionate ones.

Then again, perhaps those groups are just not as worth discussing other than in side notes like these HN comments and that's just fine too.

I think what you describe is captured fairly well by the third "tribe":

> The way people in this camp describe themselves is fundamentally pragmatic. They write software because software is useful to other people [...] I think most professional software engineers are in this tribe

Fwiw, I don't think "tribe" is a good word for what the author describes. Maybe "attitude" or "principle" would be more fitting, albeit less catchy and intriguing.

I don't like the term tribe either. To me, these are biases. And biases can change or be context-sensitive. I find myself in 1 and/or 3 often depending on the work.

I don't think what he described is captured at all by the third "tribe." He clearly does it for money and there should be a fourth "tribe" for that category. I agree with you that "tribe" is a poor choice here.

I really wish there was a professional organization or - dare I say it! - a union which represented this point of view of SWE. I like what I do but I hate how much of work and tech culture creeps into your life, as though it's the end all and be all of one's existence. No one expects plumbers, welders, or civil engineers to be making drainage systems in their spare time.

There is the principal difference, which is well seen in how software engineers compare to all other sorts of engineers (less so today, as apparently all engineers now are a little software engineers).

Plumbers, welders and civil engineers are supposedly trained in their area and know well how to solve a pretty well defined set of problems. Much better defined than a similar set for software engineers. So for plumbers "execution" is paramount, not - mostly not - the creative side of designing. While software is bigger, more vague and with less clear-cut recipes area.

This is less and less true lately - last couple of decades in particular - as more and more software engineers are actual plumbers in this sense. Those don't make drainage systems - or, write program - in their spare time - they take photos, sing or enjoy woodworking. Even though their employers seek people who'd program in spare time.

Those who do - there are plenty of those who enjoy programming more than just to make it a profession - can be attributed to first or second group. I think the third group actually has plenty of them as well. They don't need to think of technology to be all, end all of one's existence - they just enjoy programming, and doing little, or pretty big (this is harder, so has a lesser chance) work pieces for people. But they don't necessarily not programming on weekends.

Are there any skilled workers - whether plumbers, welders, carpenters, lawyers, accountants, doctors, pilots, or programmers - who immediately stop thinking about, keeping up with, or otherwise expressing an interest their field after clocking out for the day?

Some more than others. But few, it seems.

I have a friend who is married to a carpenter, and she says absolutely nothing in the house gets fixed, because he's done with work when he gets home, but doesn't want to pay someone else to do something he could do.

There is, just not in every country.

https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi...

https://www.ingenieurwesen-studieren.de/studienwahl/abschlue...

Usage of Google translate is left as exercise.

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