So, have you also noticed that developers have a certain … fondness for arguing?
If you haven’t, I can assure you other people have, because they are selling t-shirts like this:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1016820004/software-developer-t-shirt-funny
This is an actual product you can buy on Etsy.
I would just like to point out that it doesn’t say “Nurse” on the t-shirt or “Baker” or even “Politician”.
There must be a consensus out there. I mean, enough people must believe devs like to argue that it is worth it to have a shop selling these t-shirts.
I’ve heard(*) that 72% of developers believe that there is a right and a wrong way to do … basically everything 😁.
But the problem in this is that these 72% do not agree with each other at all.
(*) I made this up, but it sounds plausible, right?
Great fights
For instance, have you ever seen PR reviews that are full of nit-picking comments?
Comments that request changes which are inconsequential to the actual solution as well as to the quality of the codebase?
We make each other waste time re-doing work that has already been done, because we really are sure our way is better.
And you’ve also probably have already been at a meeting, where a new idea is proposed only to be met with 100 reasons why this just won’t work at all.
The commentators will sound like this: “I’ve though about this for full 5 mins and I *know* this is a bad idea. I’ve never done it before or have seen it being done, but I just know *you* are for sure not right.”
Are we just mean people?
Here is why I think we argue soo much.
I think it’s not because we are mean. And we probably also aren’t dumb. I would say, at the very least, we must be average smart.
But it is often believed that developers are supposed to be very smart, very intelligent people.
It is often hard to prove one’s intelligence. If there are no hard problems to solve.
So, we either make up hard problems by arguing how the correct method name will save the company or we point out why somebody else’s solution won’t work and thereby also saving the company millions of moneys.
But why do we feel that we need to prove ourselves? Here are a few ideas:
Working alone, in silence… possibly in a basement
We spend so much time in our heads.
Alone. Thinking. Reading.
Writing and thinking again.
By the time we open a PR, propose a solution, we often aren’t interested in feedback anymore. We’ve already thought and read and wrote.
We are done now.
The myth of the brilliant, lonesome hero dev
Another reason is our society that is obsessed with individual people, who single-handedly and completely alone did some great stuff.
We are all good students. If individualism is highly rewarded, then can we really be blamed for being individualistic?
Change? No, thank you
The next problem is changing old ways. At the beginning we know nothing, but as we learn stuff, we want to keep believing it forever.
Once you believe something, it is hard to stop believing it.
Let me quote some a research paper on opinion forming that I came across:
The first result of our experiment is that participants exhibited a significant bias toward their own initial opinion rather than equally weighting all social information they were exposed to.
[…]
Moreover, even when the “compromise” strategy is chosen, individuals still give a stronger weight to their own initial opinion, which has also been implemented in the model. Therefore, contradictory feedback is typically underestimated—if not completely ignored—but opinions corroborating one’s initial opinion trigger an increase in confidence.
— Moussaïd M, Kämmer JE, Analytis PP, Neth H., Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation, 2013
Most of us will always first try to confirm we are right, before we even entertain the possibility that we are wrong.
1.000.000 more reasons
There’s obviously more to it.
And it is curious that on average people, who are educated in academia tend to be more argumentative than people who are not. But, let’s put this aside for a future discussion.
How to get better?
I believe, there is only 1 cure to this arguing epidemic.
We should all internalize the mantra: “We are not as smart as we think we are”.
And this is not as hard as it sounds.
Just imagine how much smarter we will be, if for just the next year, 365 days, we try to learn more than we argue.
Imagine the possibilities.