alt Hacker NewsI refuse to use LLMs and don't have a job, so I'm just some guy.
What I find strange about this is that in 2020 nobody would be this openly cynical and selfish about, say, good Python idioms, a useful emacs configuration, git shortcuts, etc. This attitude of "your job is to deliver value for the customer, anything else is a distraction, and if you share your hard-earned value-delivery techniques with others then you are a sucker" - this is new, and very disconcerting.
I understand there's not much we can do to stop the cyberpunk dystopia, but do we have to leap in head-first?
Replies
Those are completely different from a tool you wrote yourself: Where do they get support when something goes wrong?
This mindset has always existed in the area we're talking about, and not because it's sharing something to speed up with. It's because we don't want to get stuck doing a second job supporting the tool.
I've built all sorts of random tools for myself over the years and haven't shared a single thing, but share the tips and tricks like your examples all the time.
> What I find strange about this is that in 2020 nobody would be this openly cynical and selfish about, say, good Python idioms, a useful emacs configuration, git shortcuts, etc.
I definitely saw people have concerns about vimrc files and their personal library of shell scripts well before 2020, and I've seen people early in their career get burned by sharing it too. They had a tool that made them productive, it got out of their hands, and suddenly they're getting negative feedback from someone who tried using it and it didn't meet their expectations, or it got checked into the repository and now the script they used at their last job too has their current job's copyright notice and license on it, and they're perceived as being petty for trying to claw back their own intellectual property because they didn't go to the trouble of slapping legalese all over their personal tools.