[drblast]

I must be getting old.

Kids, many years ago, even before jQuery, software would come with documentation that you could read and it would tell you how to use it effectively.

I know, crazy right? But to this day some of that old software, of which PostgreSQL is an example, still has this documentation that you can read, even before you use the software in a production system.

Yeah, yeah, I know Agile and Docker solved the problem of ever having to document anything, but this is the way things used to be and a few of us are stuck in our ways and still like it.

[derefr]

I second reading the Postgres docs. They're fabulous resources. Any time I'm attempting to apply a new SQL syntax feature I'm not 100% fluent with, I'll give the PG docs a read-through—not just for usage, but also for idiomatic examples, performance analysis, edge-cases to consider, and more.

[slantyyz]

>> even before jQuery

If you're getting old then I must be ancient! I remember when all the software documentation had to be printed on this white stuff made out of dead trees.

[jeremiep]

And then people wonder why Agile never produces quality results.

Intellisense has replaced the need to read the docs and Agile has replaced the need to understand what you're doing.

Its no surprise that basic knowledge found in the documentation is later "discovered" when the project is already running in production.

[cookiecaper]

To be fair, the honest among us will admit that it's not unusual to miss something glaringly obvious for an embarrassingly long amount of time.

The difference is really in whether you recognize the issue and quietly hope no one finds out how dumb you really are, or whether you make a big celebratory blog post about the secret behind your "pioneering" work, making sure that your title and first and last name are clearly attached. And of course, we can't fail to highlight the further brilliance of accomplishing this marvelous feat by employing "rarely used, low-level" commands from within the framework's ORM.

Hold on to your butts, because next week he's going to learn that you can execute commands directly on the server, without even having to use the "low-level" elements of an ORM! I can't wait for the field to be revolutionized by Lead Developer James Gordon's next discovery.

[nsxwolf]

Maybe cut Lead Developer James Gordon some slack. He may not have wanted this attention, which came from Ben Welsh. Welsh describes himself as a "data journalist" and a "hack computer programmer". Perhaps he just thought this improvement made by the developer was really cool, and wanted to blog about it, not understanding the snark's nest he was stepping into.

[cookiecaper]

You're right, of course. I considered mentioning the possibility that this was meant more as a test PR style or tongue-in-cheek "Haha this is obviously super important"-style post, since these are definitely viable explanations, but I felt the rant was already long enough and I couldn't find an easy way to work it in.

One of the most dangerous things about sharing stuff with others, especially isolated items from unknown authors with a worldwide audience, is that you never really know how much of their own context the recipient will read in, or how much of the assumed / pre-requisite context they'll fail to infer (or infer differently than intended).

You only get better at this through repeated practice, but you can't ever be perfect at it. Especially in a world of complex social interactions where people don't always mean what they say or say what they mean, and the lack of body language and facial expression in written language silently corrupts the signal.

All readers should always remember, it is easy to criticize. It is much harder to do. Critics especially need to remember this, because it's very easy, automatic in fact, to fall into a pattern of judgment and criticism when we're regularly exposed to so much stuff from so many sources. But it's good to get out there and try, because it's often much harder than it looks, and especially if you've been on the sidelines judging for a long time, it can be jarring how much harder it is to do than to say (or, particularly, deride).

A great way to test this: if there's some radio program you listen to regularly where callers can share a brief anecdote or story, call in. As a regular listener, you've been silently evaluating callers on a daily basis for years. You likely have some opinion about the practices of good callers and bad callers. Call in and you'll be surprised how nerve-wracking it can be, even for someone as "experienced" as yourself, and I think you'll be disappointed in your overall performance (unless you've thoroughly rehearsed ahead of time).

This is just a tiny, irrelevant thing that most people wouldn't give any thought to, a quick ~60 second phone call. You certainly don't give much thought to it every day when you dismiss anecdotes or stories told by amateurs. But try it yourself and you'll get a great deal on some perspective for the difficulty gap between doing v. criticizing.

The peanut gallery can, and will, always find something to nitpick. Don't take it personally. Use that data to hone your interactions and get a better-tuned result next time.

[gaius]

This is where the rampant ageism in the industry has lead us; millennials who expect a prize for doing something totally obvious to anyone with experience, who was never considered for the job because they were “too old”

[whistlerbrk]

I understand your sentiment, but I think your wording is a bit mean spirited. I don't think this person "expects a prize", nor do I think this is a trait that can be applied to millenials as a whole. My sister who has hired literally a hundred people bucketed as "millenials" has had the exact opposite experience in dealing with them than you describe. She thinks they are some of the hardest working people she has ever worked with. But we digress.