I really think that 'community' is one of the most abused words in the English language today. I flinch whenever I hear it in tech circles, much like my reaction to the word 'enterprise.'
There's a case for using the word below the Dunbar Number (150) but in the space between that and the next order of magnitude, it breaks down.
"Great-Grandpa tell me about Mark Zuckerberg again."
"Well, there was a man in the early 21st century who had a social site with 2.7B users and he called it a 'community.'"
"Hahahaha.. that's not real!"
"Well, there was a man in the early 21st century who had a social site with 2.7B users and he called it a 'community.'"
"Hahahaha.. that's not real!"
When you move beyond the way we abuse the word 'community' for users, to what we do to ourselves, it's weirder. There is no software development community. There are about 25M software developers in the world, in about 200 countries in wildly different industries and cultures.
Community exists, in the small. It is the circle of people you interact with repeatedly.
When it moves beyond that human basis, it becomes a word like 'enterprise'.. A word used to sell something.
When it moves beyond that human basis, it becomes a word like 'enterprise'.. A word used to sell something.
Sometimes the thing being sold is a product. Sometimes it’s a set of ideas or a vision of uniformity and consensus.
But rest assured, you’re being sold something.
Buyer beware.
