My experience is that that plainly does not work. I work with developers of both types, and the junior ones who are part of the first group are limited in their ability by experience, but they have an inquisitive mind and don't give up quickly when they encounter something they don't understand.
Much more experienced developers of the second type just throw their hands up and give up (or now: turn to AI). I've worked closely with them to try and reform them. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong, but it has never succeeded.
With the ones from the first group it can work that way: you can show them how you approach problems and they will ask questions and pick up patterns and you'll see them improve.
> Even then, the businesses don't want to pay for that, and why should the workers give that away for free?
Businesses would need a high likelihood that they can reap the rewards of upskilling employees. Why invest a lot of money and high-talent attention into someone who might quit? At the same time, I'll happily pay three times as much for a truly skilled senior developer. I think the employee's incentives are much more aligned: it will increase their market value, it's an investment into their wealth, not the business'.
>My experience is that that plainly does not work.
The apprenticeship model isn't in practice at any scale in software, I don't see how you could believe that. Practically every career start is self-taught or university to junior positions which is not the high-attention, one-on-one focus you'd get.
>Why invest a lot of money and high-talent attention into someone who might quit?
What happens if you don't and they stick around? You might say 'well, I'd just fire them' but then you are going to have a culture of people always having one foot out the door. And a high amount of position switching in the industry has led us to what we have today where people don't really stay and build for the long-term, and shoddy code bases also drive people to quit.
An apprenticeship model also helps if you can do 3-5 year agreements for training where you see the most benefit from the person in the last 1-2 years.
As good as it has been for my career, switching often probably needs to slow down (while raises go up) and apprenticeships go into effect for better quality training.
All this assuming there isn't another major leap in AI competency though.
I think the less charitable and more honest reading is: he wouldn't have allowed such a commit if it wasn't an Automattic product that benefits. He's been making very clear business decisions and forcing them into the foundation (which he controls) for a while (gutenberg was about wordpress.com's goal of competing with wix.com etc, not about wordpress.org), this is just one of the more aggressive ones, which is why it stands out.
His usual response is "but we're also sponsoring .org with developers" ... yeah, that's true, with developers who do Automattic's bidding and ensure that .org is pursuing .com's needs. He'd have to pay those developers either way, but this way he can call it a charitable donation.
Fair point, although I'd also add that preferential treatment for first-party products is sadly not that surprising when it comes to open source from for-profit companies. It's something that would be disappointing but probably not enough to make me able to recognize this guy's name if he hadn't already been going even further in trying to directly control the ecosystem than this (and causing a bunch of employees to leave in the process)
This is something people seem to miss. His position as CEO of Automattic creates a huge conflict of interest with his position at the non-profit foundation.
This is an example: the foundation's code gives special treatment to an Automattic product.
Were you aware of it and its relevance to this decision at the time you wrote the comment? My interpretation of your defence of it as just the CEO making a product decision was that you did not know. If you did know it seems to miss the point which is that he made a decision that was better for his company but worse for Wordpress.
It would be fine if Wordpress was developed by Automattic, but its not.
I was aware of it, but as an outsider, this actually seemed like a reasonable decision. Wordpress sites that allow external comments need some kind of comment moderation, lest they become instant spam cesspits. The CEO said hey, we're adding this section to feature suggested plugins, and we should add this long-time anti-spam plugin to it. In a vacuum, that looks fine to me. I'd rather see them emphasizing comment moderation than talking up a commercial add-on. Sure, this is a subscription they sell to businesses, so it's not a charitable work. It's one of the more defensible subscriptions I can think of, though.
And I really don't see it as worse for Wordpress. It's the kind of thing I think they should be recommending because it benefits the whole ecosystsem.
To be super clear, I am far, far from a Matt/Automattic (same thing) fanboy. I think this was a good decision in spite of my opinion of him, not because of it.
> The CEO said hey, we're adding this section to feature suggested plugins, and we should add this long-time anti-spam plugin to it. In a vacuum
The lead developer of a not for profit project said lets favour the anti-spam plugin that is provided by the company I am CEO of. Is that an entirely impartial decision?
> And I really don't see it as worse for Wordpress. It's the kind of thing I think they should be recommending because it benefits the whole ecosystsem.
All the Wordpress core committers apart from the two that work for Automattic disagree with you as far as I can tell.
Some people have a view of open source contributors as some sort of amorphous mass of strangers, and that leads to unrealistic suppositions. The contributors aren't really amorphous, they exist, they're knowable, they have personalities and jobs.
A project such as wordpress(.org) depends very strongly on those who do the work. And in the case of Wordpress, that's some spare-time volunteers, some employees of other companies, but the biggest group is Automattic employees. If you do most of the work, as Automattic does, the project depends on you and you get to call the shots.
I understand that point, but I disagree. Automattic controls the process, which keeps a lot of initiatives out because there's no reasonable expectation of improvement unless it aligns with Automattic.
I don't believe the project would fold were Automattic to quit -- there's a lot activity outside of the core that is alienated by Matt's behavior. Might well be an improvement if the focus of .org isn't about what .com needs, but about what .org wants to offer to users.
figma has figma make to do these things, and it's much worse. It can only generate react code, even if you ask it not to. claude design worked great on the first attempt for me, miles ahead of what figma make does.
> But also, homicidal is doing some heavy lifting here, isn't it?
Yeah, wishing someone's family to be chopped to pieces isn't actually homicidal.
While saying no such thing and not acting in such a way that suggests as much is deeply suspicious because that's just being "polite and closeted about it". And thus the totally not homicidal brutal-murder-liking-people who are absolutely not wishing death and destruction on people not sharing their ideology are the ones to support. because the others are fascists, because they don't say they want the families of others murdered.
A big part is also that wp.org is very tolerant of malicious-adjacent actors.
Actual malware? the plugins will get blocked.
Plugin randomly starts injecting javascript from a third party domain that displays some football related widget with affiliate links? they figured that's perfectly in the (new) owner's right and rejected any action even though it was a classic bait and switch with an entirely unrelated plugin.
You're arguing that being an open fascist is better than being someone you suspect to be a fascist, even though they haven't said anything that confirms it.
Not at all. Please try reading more carefully and avoid being reductive. I'm arguing that you're confusing the tone of rhetoric with the meaning of it and drawing the wrong conclusion from that. Just because one side is more polite and shrouded by the structure of a corporation doesn't mean you should reflexively support them because of that.
If you are arguing that "siding with the others because of rethoric is dangerous", you are right in general. But to a very surprised reader of this thread, you are arguing with someone that responded to
> Anyone deliberately facilitating that certainly deserves the worst fate imaginable.
That came in a thread started with a now (justly) removed
> might wake up to their family chopped to pieces
This sets the tone I (and possibly others) interpret that message.
I know we are supposed to charitably interpret what people write on here, but a thread like this makes it really hard, given the tone.
You're right, I did pick a bad example. It was extreme, and I'm sure many HN users work for corporations like this and felt targeted.
But it's also worth considering exactly what the mass surveillance state we've got is directly leading to - deaths of many people. How many people have been disappeared or killed by ICE because of technology like this? That's just one group actively targeted by surveillance tech, and the government intends to go after millions more, as they've publicly stated. That's not to mention how many millions of people have had their lives worsened or ruined directly or indirectly because of tech like this.
These sorts of things aren't an innocent startup consisting of a few nerds in a garage, they're shaping the world and setting the stage for the expansion of horrible atrocities. This is ultimately what I mean - you have to look at the effects of what they're doing and the actual consequences. Once you see that and know people who are more directly affected/targeted by these technologies, it becomes a lot more clear why people are so angry at them.
I think the point was: it might be a bit more expensive for them, but it wouldn't stop them from getting guns. Guns are important to their business, they would manufacture them themselves if they could not buy them.
Would it cost them more? yes. would it be the "number 1 priority" because it's so impactful? no, obviously not.
Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of making guns. But I'm aware of zero conflicts in which small arms were manufactured in situ. Even in e.g. Myanmar/Burma. The fact that even remote conflicts go through the trouble of importing arms suggests this might be more difficult than you suggest.
They would be if it wasn't easy to import them. It's not like modern mass production has made gun violence possible because up until then it was too hard to manufacture guns.
It's similar to services: you can your own email server, but it's much more efficient to use some vendor and let them do it for you. But if all vendors cut you off, it won't be impossible for you to host your down email, it'll just be less efficient.
I'm fascinated by your point on Myanmar/Burma since I'm quite sure you used that point since it's common knowledge that is the most commonly cited example of the use of in situ firearms by militia. Maybe you're inviting a debate on why you think the reports on in situ firearms reported there are false, or maybe you just randomly came upon that, but it doesn't seem a coincedence.
Myanmar/Burma the strategy was build-to-capture: make improvised, unreliable firearms that could be used to ambush security forces and take their firearms.
Evidence against the point above that it's trivial to replace professionally manufactured small arms.
There are examples of all the above. Kachine state "army" for instance was making Chinese and AKM clones. Others were making FGC-9 for purpose of taking other firearms. Some were using FGC-9 for driveby without any goal to take firearms. And others were using "professionally" manufactured arms to take other arms.
There was some model named FGC2000 which was used with short unrifled 9mm tubes, meaning the range was low and could only be used as parent described. Saw this on a YouTube video but can't find it now.
> Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of making guns
These are centuries-old objects. Manufacturing technology and materials science have advanced nearly 100 years since Ma Deuce first rolled off the line. Society didn't get dumber, and manufacturing has only gotten more accessible.
Just look at the current state of 3D printed firearms: they're completely useful and viable. CNC machining has never been cheaper or easier to do.
It's quite evident their point is that they don't want gun control and have pre-committed to whatever opinions are necessary to prevent it, including an opinion as absurd as "having to manufacture their own firearms would not be a significant impediment to their operations."
Mass synthesis of the drugs that cartels produce is trivial (that's why they produce them)
Putting drugs on trucks is trivial (that's why they do that)
Rudimentary semi-submersible vessels are impressive but you only need a few and they're not that hard to make (again, that's why they make em)
The telecom stuff they do is legitimately pretty impressive, but this too is just significant capex for long term benefit -- not so with self-made guns which are significant capex and you get out the other side a low volume of low-quality, non-dependable, often-breaking guns.
Much more experienced developers of the second type just throw their hands up and give up (or now: turn to AI). I've worked closely with them to try and reform them. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong, but it has never succeeded.
With the ones from the first group it can work that way: you can show them how you approach problems and they will ask questions and pick up patterns and you'll see them improve.
> Even then, the businesses don't want to pay for that, and why should the workers give that away for free?
Businesses would need a high likelihood that they can reap the rewards of upskilling employees. Why invest a lot of money and high-talent attention into someone who might quit? At the same time, I'll happily pay three times as much for a truly skilled senior developer. I think the employee's incentives are much more aligned: it will increase their market value, it's an investment into their wealth, not the business'.
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