I don’t buy this article in the same way others here seem to be doing. It sounds like the author is a little too… in love with himself? He’s entrenched in a certain mindset where he’s the “enthusiast developer” and others are lesser, while trying to empathize with his lessers as if to say “well, you know, your way of working is ok too!” It’s the image of admonishing his old way of thinking, but he hasn’t abandoned or renounced that way of thinking, he’s just lamenting it. All of the arguments presented are colored by this personal bias.

I wish I could break down every part of the article that I take issue with, but just to illustrate my problem, here’s some side-by-side quotes where I think undermines the author’s own points:

Once I introduced the word “generation” to my thinking, it became easier to make sense of many contentious, unresolved issues in tech that flared up over the past decade by looking at them through the lens of intergenerational conflict.

If you allow for the possibility we’re undergoing a generational change, maybe this debate over “passion” is evidence that the assumption that most programmers will always be passionate about programming was mistaken and counter-productive.

If you were hoping to bridge the gap between two different kinds of developers, where you see yourself squarely on one side, then calling your relationship with the other side a “conflict” is not going to win over any friends.