> Jeff Atwood once pointed out that he wasn't trying to write for his readers, he was trying to write for the millions of programmers worldwide who don't read any blogs at all. Most of them don't work in "The Valley."
Agree and disagree. Yes, library implementers should think about application developers and the problems they're solving first and foremost. One of the most interesting developments lately has been the work on making concurrency accessible to application developers, which illustrates "and disagree" part: I used the example of Doug Lea's beautiful work on java.util.concurrent to show that while an application developer (or even a systems implementer without a good cause, for that matter) shouldn't have to implement lock free data structures themselves, they have to ultimately understand what lock free data structures solve and don't solve in order to be aware of them and know where to use them.
Lastly, one of the recurring themes of articles I see on this site is about creating a "The Valley" elsewhere (and I don't just mean Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv, etc... - tech cultures in each are more similar to each other than they're different). Perhaps that's something to ponder: is there a culture of "cut and paste and clock out" or "build software that's an asset and not a liability"?
Agree and disagree. Yes, library implementers should think about application developers and the problems they're solving first and foremost. One of the most interesting developments lately has been the work on making concurrency accessible to application developers, which illustrates "and disagree" part: I used the example of Doug Lea's beautiful work on java.util.concurrent to show that while an application developer (or even a systems implementer without a good cause, for that matter) shouldn't have to implement lock free data structures themselves, they have to ultimately understand what lock free data structures solve and don't solve in order to be aware of them and know where to use them.
Lastly, one of the recurring themes of articles I see on this site is about creating a "The Valley" elsewhere (and I don't just mean Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv, etc... - tech cultures in each are more similar to each other than they're different). Perhaps that's something to ponder: is there a culture of "cut and paste and clock out" or "build software that's an asset and not a liability"?