Dark Matter Developers

there is another kind of developer than the ones that [I] meet all the time.

They don’t read a lot of blogs, they never write blogs, they don’t go to user groups, they don’t tweet or facebook, and you don’t often see them at large conferences. Where are these dark matter developers online?

Part of this is the web’s fault. The web insists on moving things forward at a rate that makes people feel unable to keep up.

Lots of technologies don’t iterate at this speed, nor should they. Embedded developers are still doing their thing in C and C++. Both are deeply mature and well understood languages that don’t require a lot of churn or panic on the social networks.

Where are the dark matter developers? Probably getting work done.

They use mature products that are well-known, well-tested and well-understood. They aren’t chasing the latest beta or pushing any limits, they are just producing. (Or they are just totally chilling and punching out at 5:01pm, but I like to think they are producing.) Point is, we need to find a balance between those of us online yelling and tweeting and pushing towards the Next Big Thing and those that are unseen and patient and focused on the business problem at hand.

The Dark Matter Developer will never read this blog post because they are getting work done using tech from ten years ago and that’s totally OK. I know they are there and I will support them in their work.