@samir My guess is that about 99% of professional devs work on either pointless or actively harmful stuff. But my definition of 'pointless' is wide. Anything that serves capitalist goals, i.e. exists for the purpose of profitability or financial growths is pointless in my view. Most of the not pointless stuff is developed by volunteers, i.e. unpaid devs or scientists, who need software for doing their science, but who are not software engineers by profession.
I’m genuinely just curious: can we not assume some of those scientists doing software development could also be acting harmfully or pointlessly?
Edited 157d ago
@james @levampyre @samir I think you might have accidentally read "most of the non-pointless software is being made by ... scientists" as "most of the scientists developing software are making non-pointless software," but I don't think that was ever said. Like if someone said most NASA engineers are neurodivergent, it wouldn't mean most neurodivergent people are NASA engineers
But like I get it, I switch things like that all the time
@raphaelmorgan @levampyre @samir
I didn’t, no.
I was simply wondering how levampyre could come to the conclusion that of the non-pointless software out there, is mostly made by scientists and the like. And not generic non-scientist developers.
I did not think the suggestion was that most scientists make non-pointless software.
Whilst I understand you were trying to be helpful, it’s really uncomfortable to be told by someone else what I was thinking and have it framed in this way.
Perhaps it was my wording that I fucked up, but I’d appreciate requests to explain rather than being told I did wrong.
Edited 156d ago
@raphaelmorgan I might have written that in an unusual way. I'm not native in English and tend to use German structures for nested sentences a lot. Which understandably confuses natives. But you explained correctly what I meant.
@james @samir
@levampyre @raphaelmorgan @samir
That is indeed what I read, you did not write in an unusual way.
Evidently, I did, if everyone is misunderstanding me. I apologise.
@james Oh, scientists amongst others, because people, who are neither developers, nor scientists in some way, have a personal need to write a lot of software. It's an assumption, true. Convince me otherwise. I'm open to learning.
@james sorry for causing you discomfort. I have a tendency to try and clear up misunderstandings because that's what I would want in the situation, but I'm reminded I can't assume others think like me even if I relate to a lot of the things they say. I'll make a note not to do that to you in the future.
And thank you for explaining what you were saying, because evidently I was confused 😅
I definitely understand, and can and do the same, hashtag James has autism.
in my specific instance I didn’t misunderstand at all which is where the upset comes from. I’m someone who struggles to be understood a lot and it’s quite a challenge for me as an autistic person, so when someone tells me I am communicating or interpreting wrong, I believe them. But then I saw that no, I didn’t have a wrong interpretation.
As I said, it’d be better to frame it as questions. Like tell me you don’t understand, could I re explain? Not tell me I don’t understand.
Edited 156d ago
@levampyre @raphaelmorgan @samir
I don’t want to convince you, I just wanted to learn more about what you thought and why :)
Like, “this is interesting, but I don’t know how they reached this conclusion, I would like to learn more about their experiences, perhaps they have worked in both of these fields and saw a trend?”.
That’s it :)
Anyway, I’ll wish you all a nice day
@james Ah, yeah, I've indeed worked in both of these fields and saw trends. Not science directly, but humanities/academia and some scientist friends. So there's where that assumption comes from.