If you want to impress developers wouldn't you simply get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem?

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

More context: https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs-brandonm/

As a developer it's very hard to see what kind of software normal people find useful. I happened to overhear a conversation about Dropbox, the idea that you could read-only share a document was simply amazing to them. I rolled my eyes then. But also knew at that moment that Dropbox would become very popular.

What even?

It is making fun of the one of the top comment that was on the Show HN Dropbox.

Here we go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Ninja'd, should have refreshed.

Someone mentioned the existence of this FTP "solution" as a reason why Dropbox would not succeed, when it was first shown here.

I manage quite a lot of developers and I think the article has a point.

Out of all the different IT personal I manage, developers are the only ones who seem to think they have to be correct all the time. That doesn’t exactly brew the best atmosphere, because how can you be?

Where are developers like this? I've never encountered a person like that in my life ("have to be correct all the time"). Is this specific to FAANG? Which city? I'm familiar with startups in the Bay Area and Boston.

I agree with the sentiment though I'd reword it as "developers need to know that their understanding is correct at all times".

This is uncontroversial, we can't build things well if our understanding is wrong, whether of user requirements, budget/political process, technology, existing infrastructure/whatever.

Sure, "developers need to know that their understanding is correct at all times", this describes most if not all developers I know but this is hardly a bad thing and in the conversation above this was used in a bad connotation ("that doesn’t exactly brew the best atmosphere"). I'm even more confused now.

> Where are developers like this? I've never encountered a person like that in my life ("have to be correct all the time").

Seriously? Every nerdy subculture is full of these people.

I've worked with such developers. It's not that they can literally never accept to be wrong, but their first instinct is always to deny any failures in their work and always point out flaws in the work of others, even if they're obviously untrue.

I wrote a post on this over a decade ago: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/134

It pointed out what I thought were special reasons why developers think they have the answers, even in disciplines wildly different than software development.

Includes:

* need to ask questions

* detail orientation

* knowing (and being well compensated for) knowing about something difficult

I'm older and wiser now and hold my tongue when talking to experts in other fields, but I did my fair share of, say, reading contracts or patents in my day.

This is an excellent write up of exactly what I meant.

I should have said arrogance really, young developers often remind me of the conversation between yoda and kenobi on the arrogance of anakin in the clone wars.

I work with a guy like this. The rest of us laugh at him but he thinks we are intimidated by his technical genius and immense capability for Machiavellian political maneuvering. In reality he doesn’t take direction well but he’s around because if you let him call you stupid a few times he’ll do a bunch of your work to try and show off.

So would you say you are unimpressed by the author's thesis?

Haha yes, precisely.