31–40 of 506 posts
> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
Yes. I often explained that CS was more like a math degree than an engineering degree.
> Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money." Oh, I didn't realize tech invented the library card.
Libraries are not run with "Access to Information" as their main goal. They're run with service to patrons as their main goal. If you think I'm making a distinction without a difference, how many libraries have subscriptions to Playboy?
It might be a difference, but it's a difference for which the university comparison is a red herring.
How many universities have a porn department?
> Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money." Oh, I didn't realize tech invented the library card.
>Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. I'm not sure if he's saying these hard-working generalists are hard to find, or undesirable to employ?
> Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes.
But I wonder how many important Open Source projects were started that way, by employees of companies which wanted to use those projects. Linux, for example, most certainly was not begun that way.
>Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. I'm not sure if he's saying these hard-working generalists are hard to find, or undesirable to employ?
I'm also confused. What's a "mod a l employee"?
> Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money." Oh, I didn't realize tech invented the library card.
As cool as libraries are, and they are cool, if you value your time at even minimum wage rates, they are not "coffee money". That's why you... yes, you, even you... whip out your phone to answer questions that you would never dream of running to the library to answer on the spot. This is a real effect, not an illusion. Friction matters, a lot.
> Everyone in Silicon Valley uses equity, and not debt, to fuel their growth because debt is not available in sufficient quantities to poorly capitalized companies without a strong history of adequate cash flows to service debt. A corollary to this is that if you're fundraising and can get debt, you should take it over equity almost every time. Many founders are skeptical of debt because everyone takes equity, yet ev…
Debt vs. equity is always a case-by-case situation. Debt is cheaper but comes with strings attached. Equity is pricey but more flexible.
This is oft repeated, but not always true. Take the Nazis (bear with me).
The Nazis had the best execution ever. They almost drowned the whole British army, which had previously conquered the world. While fighting battles all over Europe and being one of the most bombarded country in history, they continued to produce tanks, planes, submarines, operate a bureaucracy until the very end, invent bombs and other systems that befuddled all other nations.
Yet they lost the war. The reason they lost the war is, their idea was so bad, people everywhere were willing to die to make it fail.
An excellent idea can survive a bad execution for some time. A terrible idea will ultimately fail, no matter the execution.