The article is both very true and not yet completely true. Some developers still believe having a large community or online social media presence is important. It might very well be, but it has no bearing on code.
Code is objective. It solves problems, passes tests, does something new, and performs better.... or it doesn't. Social media presence has no bearing on this at all. Yet, each impart a type of online trust. One is capabilities (competence) trust and the other is marketing or branding trust.
For people who don't know the difference or don't understand the value in the code marketing/branding trust is the only thing that exists. For everybody else trust in branding loses value quickly and must struggle to compete with the other more objective trust factor. It should be noted this "everybody else" category is the minority but is more influential on things get built of prioritized.
Code is objective. It solves problems, passes tests, does something new, and performs better.... or it doesn't. Social media presence has no bearing on this at all. Yet, each impart a type of online trust. One is capabilities (competence) trust and the other is marketing or branding trust.
For people who don't know the difference or don't understand the value in the code marketing/branding trust is the only thing that exists. For everybody else trust in branding loses value quickly and must struggle to compete with the other more objective trust factor. It should be noted this "everybody else" category is the minority but is more influential on things get built of prioritized.