Your Inner Amateur Doesn’t Want You To Read This!
Meta-thoughts on Medium and other commenting systems.
The Amateur leaves a short comment, treating Medium as if it were YouTube or Facebook.
The Professional expands their opinions, recognizing that Medium’s responses are in and of themselves brand-new, fully-featured articles that deserve to be treated as such. 📝
The Amateur writes in plaintext, formats in plaintext, and publishes in plaintext.
The Professional uses the WYSIWYG, recognizing that these tools exist for a reason beyond being annoying and resembling Microsoft Word, and they should use them, even if only sparingly.
They start in plaintext, as we all do.
But they never stop there. 😉
The Amateur thinks their response exists only as a comment to the original article, and does not need any further explanation.
The Professional knows the response is itself a stand-alone article, and so it helps to refer back further up the chain of responses to the article that started the whole thing (musing on the differences between the Amateur and Professional mindset, in this case), because not everyone who’s read this article will have read that one and as a result is missing the necessary context to understand that I’m trying to set an example vs. simply “schooling” or scolding someone else in the chain. ⛓
The Amateur is a “Gater”: a gatekeeper, a backseat driver, a critic. They only see what they don’t like (regardless of whether or not it’s any good in the first place), and they hate what they don’t like. They don’t care whether or not they know how to do things right, and as a result they wrongly think they’re doing things “right” because there’s nothing built into the system to prevent them from making the mistake in the first place. 🐊
The Professional is a “Gamer”: a scorekeeper, a tastemaker, a hacker. They understand the rules, why those rules exist, and when those rules deserve to be broken. The gamer respects the game — even if they don’t like the content, they’ll respect the craft and skill behind it (if there’s any worth respecting). They understand how the game is supposed to work, and can tell if the game is not working as it should, whether or not the system allows for that behavior to begin with, and they figure out how to fix it. 🎮
The Amateur zeroes in and whines on the one part that “offends” them so, rather than attempting to understand the whole, and declares the entirety of it “ruined forever”. 💢
The Professional understands that it’s possible to like 99% of something without losing sight of the 1% they don’t. 🔎
The Amateur does not contribute anything of value, and if anything they take away and subtract value from the larger ecosystem with their presence.
The Professional adds value and iterates on what already exists. ➕
The Amateur wields whatever weapons they have at their disposal, be it foul language, harassment, doxxing, offensive pictures, or dog-piling. 🖕
The Professional uses the tools that deliver actual results and minimize collateral damage. 🖖
The Amateur hides behind anonymity. 👻
The Professional makes their identity one worth recognizing, whether they use their real name in the process or not. 😎
The Amateur thinks they can stop the things they don’t like by using force or making those things illegal (i.e. using the force of the government) to get their way. 🔫
The Professional knows that most things have deeper motivations behind them, and by shifting or eliminating those underlying motivations, the actions they want to change will likewise be altered if not eliminated. ⚗
The Amateur thinks this article is about you. Yes, YOU. 👿
The Professional knows exactly who this article is about. 👍
◀ P R E V I O U S
You’re Closer To Being a “Real Programmer” Than You Think.
