Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Is it a silent Majority? I don't think anyone will doubt that not every interesting thing that gets done gets published and discussed on the internet and on blogs, but I don't know if I would say its a majority. From my experience there are some people in the software world who think they are either not noteworthy enough to write about what their doing or they are too noteworthy ( I am not going to share my amazing super advantage I got by making this really smart and novel thing). I have found however that in general software development, like any technical trade, works best when its subject to peer review and an open community. I think most people also know this, which is why the tech heavyweights have talked about their infrastructure and technique. They do it so others can build on what they have done and as a community we can build on each other.

There are a few who don't care to participate thinking they are either above it or below it , but the truth is most people do and everyone should.

I've worked with far more excellent people who don't blog than with those who do. In many cases, confidentiality agreements prevent the really cool stuff those people work on from seeing the light of day (except of course nestled deeply within the binary of the product in question, if it's even for public release). I don't have data, but anecdotally I'm completely willing to believe it's the majority.

That really cool stuff nestled deep in a propiratary binary, Odds are its not really that neat or cool. Thats not to say the people who made it aren't really smart and good at what they do, but odds are its been done before. By refusing to learn from and give back to the development community all they have done is made sure no one ever learns from something they might have done differently or better. Meanwhile the experts in the field are the ones who have taken whats been done, understood it, and built upon it. My point is a majority of those people _are_ giving back in the form of public discourse.

Are you really trying to argue that the majority of that which is novel is already open source, or has been discussed publicly? That's a really bold claim to make, and I really doubt it. NSA and DOD black projects? The majority of software products that I can think of are more advanced in proprietary form than their open source counterparts. Google's search algorithm?

The NSA will have some really novel and new ting we don't know about. They might be one of a handful of places where you really do have some Silent Experts. However as to your second example google

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

This is really common I can pull you up multiple research papers from them on everything from database design to ranking alogrithems. Same thing for Facebook, Twitter, IBM, Cisco, and the numerous computer science research institutions.

For the most part what you see as "Advanced" is just a better implementation of the same idea. Thats not to say that the people making the proprietary software aren't intelligent and aren't building better products because they are, but its just silly to assume that there is this world of computer engineering talent we don't hear from that's doing groundbreaking things in the shadows.

I think you're taking too narrow a definition of "expert"? - or maybe my definition is too wide. I just wouldn't expect one to necessarily be pushing the boundaries of knowledge. They just need to be good at what they do.

Good point, but that's research, not general software development, which is what you were initially talking about. Software development is about implementation, and less about research. That research paper is not the entirety of what's novel about google's search algorithm. It's more silly to assume the majority of computer engineering talent get on the megaphone when they've done something novel, many of them just aren't interested. Games developers leave it a couple of years before getting public about the nitty gritty of what they did.

You know already which one this is going to be :) http://xkcd.com/664/

Two things come to mind...

1. You can learn from a community without giving back to it.

2. It's not really a developers choice if their work is locked in a proprietary binary. That decision was made by their employer, and the only thing the developer can do is get another job (which isn't something most people will consider).

>That really cool stuff nestled deep in a propiratary binary, Odds are its not really that neat or cool.

Really? By what logic exactly did you come to this conclusion?

That really cool stuff nestled deep in a propiratary binary, Odds are its not really that neat or cool.

Well, cool could be defined to include popularity. A lot of ideas were great before they were cool. There are a lot of great ideas out there now that aren't cool.

The irony is that many of this "silent and modest" group, would also not bother to react to the discussion here.

Even today, the web is a minority of programming.

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