I have a problem with “the vision thing” in the industry at the moment. I don’t know where we’re going, or why. The technology – and our insight on how it can be applied – available to us has the ability to change the World, and instead we’re producing pointless crap and obsessing over details of page animations as if they alone will save the World.

If I hear one more wannabe-startup tell me that they plan to change the World and get rich off the back of social networking I will scream. If I see one more aggressive pitch for a site that a teenager could put together in a weekend under the guise of it being “World leading” I will hurt somebody. If I’m asked just one more time to give a quote to develop a site “a bit like eBay but with a social graph” I’m going to quit and go and be a farmer or something.

The response I got from that article was interesting. One reader suggested they had quit their job after thinking through some of the points I made. Mostly people suggested I needed a good lie down, that I was burning out.

We’re now a year and a half in, and I still feel that way sometimes. In that time, iPhone and Android app markets have grown beyond recognition, fewer startups are trying to build up to a point of acquisition quickly by simply AJAX-ifying calendars or todo lists, and the “Web 2.0 craze” seems to have settled down. We’re slowly – but surely – starting to settle down to real work.

We’re still a fair few miles away from where we could be, though. We still are spending too much time as an industry obsessed with entertainment than helping to effect change in some of the biggest problems we face as a society.

However, I’m curious: since writing that article, this blog has picked up thousands of new regular readers, people to whom the Vision Thing is a brand new concept. I’d be interested in hearing what some of you think a year and a half down the line. Are the problems still there? Have I outlived my stay in the sector and it’s time to go and buy that farm? Leave your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

1. Setup a blog using code that may or may not be production-ready
2. Configure it for deployment using the flaky, under-supported mod_fcgid for Apache 2
3. Write a story that seems to get people going
4. Post it onto reddit.com
5. Sit back, and watch your server stop responding as RAM gets gobbled up like it’s going extinct

I don’t know the exact intricate details of what happened earlier this evening as I’ve been out at an event (I’ll be writing it up in the coming days) and so have not yet had the pleasure of perusing the log files with a fine tooth-comb, but needless to say I think this weekend it won’t just be the template that will be changing on this blog. The server became responsive after a few links were taken down from reddit, and fastcgi seems to be the culprit at this end – quite simply, I was in an inter-rim setup expecting at most a couple of dozen people an hour to pass by. Not the ‘x thousand’/hour or more that Google analytics says I was dealing with that fastcgi seems to have a problem with.

Unfortunately, to try and get the traffic to stop, I had to delete the link on reddit.com for a while (it was up to 24 points and was climbing, quickly) and so some of the comments there have been lost into the ether, but to respond to the general points:

• Yes, you might be right that to use an article that was in itself mildly condescending to complain about condescension within the industry might not be the right way to address the issue, but how else do I challenge it? What else do I say? What would you do to challenge it?
• I’m not saying everybody in the industry is like that. I’m very particular in saying that there some people are like that, and it’s hurting the gig for all of us.
• I don’t doubt for a moment it goes both ways – managers can be rude, condascending pigs just like the worst It deparment. We don’t beat that by dropping down to their level, to win you need to rise above it.

What I was trying to say is that as an industry, we have an image problem, and the only people who can fix it are in the community itself. I am tired of being tarred with the same brush as some kid whose head is firmly up his own arse and who despises users. I am tired of dealing with clients who don’t trust me because they assume I’m going to play them somehow. I want to be dealt with in my own right, but there are way, way too many devs out there who are outright snakeoil salesman out to tarnish the industry to make a point. And it annoys me. I think it should stop. But I can’t stop it. So I was ranting.

Anyway, debate over from my end for now. I’ll come back to this when I have more time and resources to throw at it. Thanks for the comments and those over at reddit who gave me praise, and the server an interesting work-out in swapping out.

” I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.” – ]]> http://blog.vagueware.com/2006/09/21/on-the-rudeness-of-developers/feed/ 3