The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley

#11

Post by kellysutton » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #7

I'm surprised by the number of upvotes on this. He overhears one guy's comment and spins a yarn. With no basis. Sure there are programmers who like settlers of catalan and wear joke tshirts. Doesn't mean they're programming Gods. What the original off the cuff remark meant is get someone with some serious experience who's done it before, someone skilled in more than one language and who actually understands the funda…

Perl's still used plenty of places, like here at blip.tv, although it may not be as hip as the more modern scripting languages.

Java can come close to the performance of C, C++ and is taught in most universities these days. The inclusion of the language is appropriate.

I will say that I respect the guys that do the C, C++ and even Java more than maybe what I do day in and day out. I've got a pretty damn good grasp on JavaScript, but I'd need a few hours to brush up on pointer and memory management. I just feel like C, C++, Java are a waste of my time. But I do understand the need for the Neckbeards. It's much easier for Sir Neckbeard to jump up to a higher-level language than it would be for me to write performant C code, or even code that simply doesn't segfault on execution. And that is where their power is derived from.

I can kid myself all day long that I am great at JavaScript, but I am nothing without the engineers that write the V8 engine in Chrome. They should be compensated accordingly.

Re: The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley

#12

Post by elbrodeur » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:26 PM UTC

Is this how business people look at the people who actually make things? It's pretty unsettling.

Also, it's pretty ignorant: Anyone who's been to a Google office or to Twitter's or Facebook's office can tell you that what someone wears or what their BMI is has nothing to do with what makes a company scale.

At Google where you have 24,000 -- a significant number of which are engineers, you have old engineers, young engineers, engineers who have beards, engineers who happen to not even be male -- even engineers who wear skinny jeans and live in the mission.

The engineers I know at Apple are really well put together and make excellent software.

Re: The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley

#13

Post by jhuckestein » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:30 PM UTC

"This is the coveted currency that companies like foursquare can offer."

s/can/can't/

Re: The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley

#14

Post by relix » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

This article is bullshit.

I'm sorry but it really, truly is. I've noticed a trend here on HN that more and more of these inane articles are appearing, labelling some group and then stereotypically applying properties to the people in them.

This one is the worst. Every line is a blatant lie, pulled from thin air or just a single experience the author once had. It's obvious that he has no clue.

Why does the article get 50 points? It should be flagged.

Re: The Secret Guild of Silicon Valley

#15

Post by neilk » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

This post is so clueless I almost wonder if it's some kind of in-joke. He mentions Foursquare, which is exactly the wrong company to use as an example of "fat guys who know C++".

One of their top engineers is well known as an expert Java and Scala programmer, but also has a user picture of himself sporting pink-tinted glasses and artfully mussed hair. And I guarantee he had more fun last weekend than you did.