131–139 of 139 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever read the site? Like, actually read it, not just glanced at something someone linked you or the front page?
My opinion on BuzzFeed isn't relevant. I was asking if it was sarcasm or not because I was interested in looking into it myself if it wasn't. Wasn't going to waste my time if you were trying to make a joke.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read your comment before the article, and was all set to agree. But then I read the article. The people who come here looking for riches and playing at entrepreneurship are not "working for a paycheck". They are people who crave social standing, who crave money. They don't want to be comfortably middle class; they want to be elite. There was a giant wave of them during Bubble 1.0, but come 2001 most of them went ba…
Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class. Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle…
What I'm calling elite is indeed elite. Your insistence on telling me I'm wrong about what I've actually seen makes me think there's no point in talking to you further.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for writing this. HN is full of touchy-feely folks, hence the downvotes. For many, it's hard to look past tone. They react emotionally. Sure, maybe your grammar could be better or maybe if we forced everyone to have perfect grammar we'd never had read your post. I also have been dissatisfied with the industry and what it has become. I got into this to create solutions, not to glue others' solutions together. T…
heh yes its funny i dont karma points seriously, i was mainly interested in hearing some qualitative sort of discussion but the main complaints i got were about grammar & negativity, neither of which i am particularly apologetic about. anyway, glad u appreciated & provided a thoughtful response :) i think you are right about the "mercurial" nature. my boss says it used to be much more fun before lots of mature librar…
Best of luck to you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class. Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle…
That you are calling programmer salaries "lower middle class" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm calling elite is indeed elite. Your insistence on telling me I'm wrong about what I've actually seen makes me think there's no point in talking to you further.
I'm pointing out a sociological fact.
You do not know the definition of lower middle class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2...
The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class.
When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers making over $100,000 still fall into the LOWER middle class.
People who get into software chasing money and elite status are ignorant of the fact that programmers are not elite and do not have high social status. They have lower middle class status and pay--which is better than working class at least.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that is application specific. The same points are often made about programming, and there are certainly circumstances where you need to know how your code is compiled to assembly, or how the kernel works, for many, this isn't an issue. Sure, if you need to hit a target 30fps or 60fps in a game, then that implies what much be understood in the whole stack. Since 99+% of all startup ideas will fail, it makes no…
> You should consider the first version a throwaway. If you start out knowing that you are writing something that will be trashed, why would you invest yourself in it? It's hard to tell someone to build something that will be thrown away; to trade the time they can never get back for something that will most likely fail. That will almost certainly _not_ get their best work - which means your odds of success go down;…
This basically boils down to: why would you make a high-risk bet? The answer: Because they sometimes pay off big.
I like building things to last. But building something to last when odds of success are 50 to 1 against is foolish. If you are trying to test a startup idea, the only sensible approach is to bet the absolute smallest amount necessary to find out if the idea is worthwhile.
I've built great systems for ideas that didn't work, and it sucks. For example, in 2004 I put together a team and spent 9 months building an awesome implementation of an excellent idea that was just 5 years too early. We were all really proud of our technical work, but since we ended up with a trivial number of users, it was all, in the end, wasted effort.
Later I realized, thanks to people like Eric Ries, that the thing to do early on was to invest just enough to see if there was something to the idea. Most things won't, which means you save enough time to rebuild the few that do properly.
The "think through your ideas" thing is a false hope. You can only think so much about limited data. People can be just as happy working on something they're planning to throw away. Artists often do plenty of sketches before they do the real one, and software developers can do the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably a good rant for some other topic. But Zuckerberg is only 30, even now. The people I see turning up at entrepreneurship events and in the fundraising news aren't 60. They're ~25.
Zuckerberg dances to the tune of the greybeards just as I do. Did Zuckerberg code the backend of facebook? Hell no. He hired people to do it. What programming technologies did those people use? Styles and methods passed down by greybeards. Techniques learned at Stanford University. Techniques learned from Hacker News. Zuckerberg himself played the tech tune sung by greybeards before him--LAMP was not invented by mill…
But there's a big difference between somebody choosing to do what's known to work and that person being forced to do something that doesn't work because other people have the power. Zuckerberg started in the LAMP stack because that's what he liked for his pet projects, not because some mean old Stanford greybeard forced it upon him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That you are calling programmer salaries "lower middle class" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm calling elite is indeed elite. Your insistence on telling me I'm wrong about what I've actually seen makes me think there's no point in talking to you further.
I'm not contradicting your observations. I'm pointing out a sociological fact. You do not know the definition of lower middle class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2... The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class. When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers mak…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zuckerberg dances to the tune of the greybeards just as I do. Did Zuckerberg code the backend of facebook? Hell no. He hired people to do it. What programming technologies did those people use? Styles and methods passed down by greybeards. Techniques learned at Stanford University. Techniques learned from Hacker News. Zuckerberg himself played the tech tune sung by greybeards before him--LAMP was not invented by mill…
If you're saying that no generation invents culture completely anew, sure, that's undeniable. And uninteresting. But there's a big difference between somebody choosing to do what's known to work and that person being forced to do something that doesn't work because other people have the power. Zuckerberg started in the LAMP stack because that's what he liked for his pet projects, not because some mean old Stanford gr…
I never said greybeards are "mean", I said they are influential. Greybeards are more influential on Zuck than vice versa when it comes to technology choice. That's why Zuck chose greybeard certified tech to erect facebook on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not contradicting your observations. I'm pointing out a sociological fact. You do not know the definition of lower middle class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2... The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class. When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers mak…
You're conflating household income and individual salary, and you're also using a technical definition in a a colloquial context. Entertaining for you, I'm sure, but again it doesn't make this look like a serious discussion.
I guess you're right about failing to conform to colloquial myths and falsehoods. I tend to want to align my observations with facts and research rather than pop culture misunderstandings and ignorance.