Humane tech for developers

Wellbeing
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Interesting view on programming languages:

There are a lot of stereotypes in the IT world, like “PHP is the worst language” or that “Python is for beginners”. Thankfully, we can find the truth using github and data from developer surveys.

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Interesting, thanks for posting @abuikis.

I am planning to start with Golang, and I have a slight smile on my profile picture, so I’ll fit right in :grin:
Github is a platform that I really like in terms of functionality they provide, but it also has some worrying aspects:

  • Though Git is decentralized, all the dev productivity tools on GH are not, and they are increasingly forming a walled garden.
  • All the products and services are free for OSS use. But are they really free, or are we the product again?

After the Microsoft acquisition a flourishing ecosystem of alternative code forges has grown. One that people are not really aware of because of the dominance and network effects of GH. Gitlab is well-known, but fewer people know about Gitea or Sourcehut. (I favor Codeberg, which are all FOSS, a gitea instance).

Re: Programming languages. The focus on developer happiness is interesting. Happy developers might create happier software, and be more aware of humane technology aspects. Downside to measuring happiness is the metrics (PII) collection, which is a privacy concern.

I would still like to discuss with @ibaldo how to measure ‘flourishment’ characteristics in software and software tool. See Human Flourishing Design Guide: the science of well-being in the service of technology design

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This is a very interesting question @abuikis. However, we do need to be very skeptical when analyzing language in order to detect emotions. In other words, the use of positive words (awesome, cool, fun…) or negative words (crap, fuck, hate…) are not necessarily indicators of mental health (or happiness, if you will).

Curiously, the use of function words (like pronouns, articles and propositions) say a lot more about people’s internal lives. For example, sad people use more the pronouns “I” and “me”, and use more past- and future-tense verbs.

I recommend the work of psychologist James W. Pennebaker. He has a book about this (not an affiliate link). As a quick introduction to the subject, I recommend his TED talk:

And yes @aschrijver, I do owe you this c! It’s happening soon, I promise! (as soon as I finish HFDG landing page :v:)

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