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Comment by bstar777 | Hacker News Reader

This is such a strange thing to choose to write a derogatory article about. If you are a singular developer that is only writing code to satisfy your needs, then you can do whatever the hell you want. If you have to work in a collaborative environment, then you will likely need to play by the rules of that environment. There's not much else to say about it.

The stuff about automation doesn't even seem to fit in this article... that's a completely different conversation.

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From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce.

I've always worked at agencies so I get exposure to a great deal of projects, and I do partly see what they are saying. More and more parts of orgs are becoming intertwined with software, and they're becoming better at software, requiring you as a developer to organize and connect all the loose bits and pieces everyone else has made to achieve tasks. That takes communication and collaboration even if you're the only developer.

Half my days are spent getting access to SaaS accounts, figuring out who's in charge of what, finding out if certain things are still in use or not. A task like "automate a monthly sales report" becomes a journey of discovery, where you don't have access to anything, and nothing lives where you expect it to.

A single piece of functional software, built from the ground up, is not usually what I find in a new project anymore. More often it's a hodgepodge of SaaS that's opaque and hard to reason about in whole, but each part made sense at the time.

Good lord I think you just helped me understand why I have come to hate this line of work (web development) 20 years in.

I see now that much of my ability to accomplish a task/feature/project is now out of my control - I'm now so highly dependent on 3rd parties and spend the day sorting out stuff to glue together rather than actual creative work.

> From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce.

Tell that to millions of small-medium businesses, if their needs can't be met by squarespace (and anything other than a brochure really can't) They reach out in their network for what could be looked at as a 'computer/internet handyman'. Will they get the highest quality solution? Maybe not... but they also don't have the budget for that.

Right, there are definitely lots of very normal software projects going on. But it is worth noting that this is a new way that software is being managed and it will be up to some developers to work within it.

I don't agree with the article by the way, I don't see SaaS/cloud computing eating software at all levels.

No longer program for a living but even 20 years ago that kind of stuff was 80% of my daily job as a LAMP web programmer. I wrote as little code as possible, and only to glue stuff together. The challenge was to understand the pieces to fit together and even just remember how to access all the accounts required. In that light, I'm not seeing much has changed in the past few decades.

Climate is getting warmer so we need humans that can stand higher temperatures.

I'm guessing the article refers to a form of "cowboy coding" or similar things promoted along with the myth of the 10x programmer, where there are attempts to apply that practice (of siloing developers and having them only write code to satisfy their needs) into the organizational environment. And I'd agree with the article there, in my experience that's awful and leads to everyone being upset. The hermit programmer is no different from a rogue programmer. It's a great way to ensure that key pieces of information are missed or glossed over.

It all depends on what your perspective is. This article seems to speak to web devs, and I agree with their premise for the most part. But it doesn't work for single indie game developers. Hermit programming is very effective in that space (insert Stardew Valley reference here).

So I come back to... why bother even writing this? It's no secret that poor "team players" are a nightmare to work with.

I'd be careful with that, I don't see why game development would be any different. You still have to focus on customer satisfaction. Single indie game developers succeeding without doing that seems to be an exception, not the rule. For every Stardew Valley, it feels like I've read a dozen postmortems from people who went off developing something for years only to find out that nobody wanted it and there was no audience for it.

It all ties in perfectly. A.I. is coming for Johnny Weekend's lunch. It will build an evil version of every conceivable widget and market it to your other hobbyist friends better than you could, humiliating your entire existence further. Do you want that? then you had better sign up to my productivity cult blog spam to have a chance at beating it.

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