> I'm thoroughtly disgusted with the way I've been treated here, especially the number of downvotes I've gotten.
The first sentence of your post that is being downvoted is okay; it contributes something to the conversation:
> A spec is a contract between programmers and in the long run, it's better (for users and programmers) to follow specs and expect others to follow them, rather than to let others break them willy-nilly and just bend over backwards to accomodate.
I believe your second sentence is the reason you're being downvoted:
> Oh, but I guess since this point requires actual thinking to understand, it's not in the realm of reality...
That sentence is sarcastic, insulting to people's intelligence, and contributes nothing to the conversation. If you lose that attitude, I think your contributions would be better received.
I can't speak for everyone, but I downvoted you primarily because of your arrogant and generally uncivil tone and your predictions and assumptions as why people (would) downvote you.
Judging from your other comments, you can be fascinating and insightful, and I have much to learn from you especially in the field of programming. And yet your comment history is peppered with comments in a similar tone and attitude.
I can't tell if you're just tone-deaf or doing this on purpose, but I find it highly unpleasant. Plus, you're not following the guidelines:
> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.
I'm actually shocked at the downvotes. The previous post was discussing the problem of all the layers of abstractions, and I was pointing out that a "10x programmer" could be getting 10x results by finding ways around those abstractions.
+1, downvotes should be used quite sparingly, but are given out copiously here. I often hesitate to write or reply when the risk of offending is so high. Makes for a lousy experience.
Re: your comment, I'd say a friendlier way to characterize it is that QA isn't free, and so we choose our battles accordingly.
I can't downvote, but I believe the HN sentiment is that you should contribute to the conversation or not post at all. Your post is pretty much a "+1" in a code review (not helpful).
This is the exact same argument that is used for people in-favor of 'SPEC' work. Which gets down voted to nothing on HackerNews, yet this and its parent are getting upvoted.
> Re: Stack Overflow, while I agree with you, most of my experience with SO downvoting has purely to do with other members thinking "I feel this is a stupid question so I will downvote you".
This has been my experience too. For someone like me who's a non-professional programming hobbyist, SO has been one of the most toxic and unhelpful communities. My only helpful experiences there are with the people who also happen to have their real names for their user ids.
I've had questions downvoted because I omitted something that "should have been there", downvoted because I included some things that "should not have been there", downvoted because I "asked for a suggestion" (eg: which type of DB is better for this kind of data?), or because I asked for something "that has been asked elsewhere", even though the two questions might have different tech stacks and use cases altogether.
I recommend most beginner programmers to go to reddit instead, where there's a less barrier to entry and visibility for questions. People are happy to answer you in Reddit for some karma, while on SO, the people who answer correctly have to subtly beg the questioner to mark the answer as correct.
It’s all good. You’re welcome. I can see it both ways: its sucks to get downvoted and not know why. But also, here we are talking about something that’s not C++ modules in a thread about C++ modules.
The surest way to get massively downvoted here is to complain about downvoted, though. People seem to relish in it.
Probably. I think most of us saw the title and reacted like the guy posting "well, technically, nothing" and moved on to the however, which is a fairly straightforward list of "what are the things this system is the best at", which is mostly what we're interested in as programmers and/or startup people.
I didn't downvote you, of course, since people can't downvote stuff on articles they have posted.
Funny how you're being downvoted too. You're probably being downvoted for pointing out the naked truth about software engineering and its utter brokenness.
> HN coolkids downvoting advice that makes software more portable and reliable. What a fucking shock.
A little more verbosity on the advice might have helped. I wouldn't have properly understood you were saying without @peatmoss's reply. So without the context, your original comment just seemed like knee-jerk bash-bashing.
I didn't downvote the comment, but maybe some people think it lacks perspective and concocts theories for why criticism of their code is actually the fault of reviewers rather than taking it as a learning experience. But I didn't downvote it because who knows, maybe the commenter has actually had a bunch of bad faith reviewers.
This is a perfectly sane, at least from business point of view, argument. It is being treated with a tantrum of downvotes. That in turns shows a lot about the state of affairs in a certain bunch of programmers. Most importantly that they put their own narrowly defined version of excellence above the importance of maintainability and thus tangible business value.
To put it bluntly. I'd hire the downvoted guy/gal in a heartbeat but would shy away from the downvoters. Why? Because I need to deliver business value which pays for our salaries. And I need to do it today and tomorrow and in years from now.
This is a message to normal people that understand that coding is a _social_ activity that has an audience in the present (your coworkers) and in the future (poor maintainers). Not only you're not alone in this but you are the majority.
Ah, nice downvotes, I guess a good lesson to not comment on smartass one liners who can later edit out the entire theme and content of their original post.
The original post I commented on: "Maybe because you write software used by sysadmins?"
The first sentence of your post that is being downvoted is okay; it contributes something to the conversation:
> A spec is a contract between programmers and in the long run, it's better (for users and programmers) to follow specs and expect others to follow them, rather than to let others break them willy-nilly and just bend over backwards to accomodate.
I believe your second sentence is the reason you're being downvoted:
> Oh, but I guess since this point requires actual thinking to understand, it's not in the realm of reality...
That sentence is sarcastic, insulting to people's intelligence, and contributes nothing to the conversation. If you lose that attitude, I think your contributions would be better received.
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