What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

Is the medical field controlled by medical students, or by 60 year old medical authorities?

Is chemical engineering controlled by new graduates, or by 60 year old engineering authorities?

It's completely ludicrous to imply that programming is somehow being led astray by young people. Young people have no power. They do what they are told.

The "black box" programming philosophy was not invented by Gen Y. It was invented in the 80s at least and taught by greybeard professors.

The hip new language trend was not invented by Gen Y but was pushed by VCs and other string pulling money-masters. Paul Graham pushed LISP and Python and generally advocated for the creation of new, hipper languages.

The ageism in the field is not something that is coming from young people either. It is coming from employers with the purse strings who recognize that young people are MORE EXPLOITABLE than old people and so they can get more work for their dollars.

The reason for ageism in tech is to keep industry veterans away from impressionable young workers--what if the veterans and the youngins form some kind of union or association that drives up costs?

Old people lead every field. Young people do what they're told. Old people lead programming too--this guy just isn't one of the influencers. He isn't a 50 year old VC, a 50 year old Comp Sci prof, a 50 year old CEO, a 50 year old BDFL.

This. A billion times this. We should have "Law of minimal needed abstractions" :

Look at every abstraction as global variable accessed only from lines with goto on them. It better have a good reason for existing.

Old people control the nature of every field. Old greybeards are the ones who made computer science this way--it's just those greybeards that this man disaproves of.

This man isn't a billionaire VC, a tenured Comp Sci professor, an author of programming books, or a CEO hiring and training the kinds of employees he wants.

This guy isn't in charge, so he blames young people and assumes they are in charge. Ridiculous. Young people are just followers. They follow the money, they do what they're told, they adopt fashions in order to SURVIVE, not out of some kind of "strange entitlement."

This is maybe the tenth HN post I've read that's some iteration of this gut feeling by people who entered tech after a life-long obsession with computers. It's really cool that you're passionate about CS -- there are also a lot of people who are rational actors making rational decisions when presented with market signals, and they're not bad people for doing that. They're just acting in rational self-interest. Sorry it upsets you. Almost every industry is full of people who toil at jobs they're not passionate about, and it doesn't make their employers bad companies. It's okay to work a job and define your life satisfaction by raising a family, making art, enjoying the outdoors, etc.

There's a legitimate complaint here about poor craftsmanship, but: (1) Poor craftsmen often wash out in the interview process or torpedo the companies sloppy enough to hire them, and (2) Everyone starts off as a poor craftsman, and it would be cool if people like OP asked themselves "How can I help more people become excellent craftsmen?" than "AGHHH MORE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL AT THIS THING I LOVE, IT'S SO OVER"