This just seems wrong. You can be a contributer to the community but not the public community. You can contribute within your organization and still use the latest and greatest technologies if you choose. You can talk and collaborate on many development topics.
I work with other developers and we are constantly collaborating on ideas and technology. I don't believe that makes me a "Dark Matter Developer" because I don't share those conversations publicly.
I think it all comes down to the employees and the culture. Some people thrive in these open environments and some down. For large companies a mix probably works but if you are a small shop might as well do what works for you.
It could be quite a large task to unit test everything. Another option could be to unit test portions of the code that are impacted by the changes going forward. This can be handled by padding the development time for work done on the legacy codebase with some unit testing time.
I think this is a helpful action in some cases as well. Especially on teams where its less of a bug and more of a FAQ. Various questions about an application that are common and where to look for the answers. Saves everyone time.
For actual bugs. A lot of times they are one off, but if it is say an issue with a configuration or deployment that could come up again I definetly see the value there.
Random cards could be comforting, but the sad thing is that you would hope you would get cards from friends and family. Those seem to be a thing of the past (except from grandparents). Even thank you cards have gotten pretty rare. This is the age of the wall post... :(
I work with other developers and we are constantly collaborating on ideas and technology. I don't believe that makes me a "Dark Matter Developer" because I don't share those conversations publicly.
Thoughts?