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Where have all the hackers gone?

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Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#41

Post by luma »

nixpulvis wrote: post #8
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

You can absolutely have friends that you have unfruitful conversations with. The idea that every interaction needs to be positive to constitute friendship is extremely unhealthy and sterilizing.

I have fruitful conversations with friends, and exactly none of them have been arguments about our favorite programming languages.

This dude just wanted a pretense for a blog post about Very Strongly Held Feelings Concerning PLangs.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#42

Post by lloydatkinson »

nixpulvis wrote: post #8
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

You can absolutely have friends that you have unfruitful conversations with. The idea that every interaction needs to be positive to constitute friendship is extremely unhealthy and sterilizing.

And also very American-ised. This forced positivity seems to be a cultural aspect of American life.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#43

Post by wpietri »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #35
kayodelycaon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. The only issue I have is the lack of empathy. Friends don’t have to agree on everything. Calling your friend a jerk because their interests don’t align with yours is… odd?

OP didn't call his friend a jerk though. He said the conversation wasn't fruitful. There was a bit of an heir of "Oh, you don't know about GC?" but I think people are reading too much into that line.

I think the problem isn't that line, it's in the rest of the article. Which I think then colors the interaction with the friend.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#44

Post by drones »

I think the author of this article grossly misunderstood the purpose of his interaction which lead to this article.

You aren't architecting a new programming language, man, you're talking to a guy about computers because you're wearing a shirt of a computer thing he liked. He wanted to talk to you because he had a mutual passion he wanted to share, and you openly challenged him in front of other people. Sorry, you were a shitty friend.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#45

Post by andai »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

The entire point of Go is that it's designed for less talented programmers, i.e. people who can't understand or don't want to put in the effort to understand those things.

That's the whole appeal of many programming languages, they massively simplify the mental model (for a price).

I've been a lot happier and more productive since I switched to a slow language (which younger me would have been sad to hear).

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#46

Post by narag »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this?

In Spanish there's a saying, la confianza da asco, that could be translated more or less as "familiarity sucks". You often treat your friends and family worse than you would to strangers. It also means that if a good friend doesn't talk truth to you, who will?

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#47

Post by shrimp_emoji »

luma wrote: post #41
nixpulvis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely have friends that you have unfruitful conversations with. The idea that every interaction needs to be positive to constitute friendship is extremely unhealthy and sterilizing.

I have fruitful conversations with friends, and exactly none of them have been arguments about our favorite programming languages. This dude just wanted a pretense for a blog post about Very Strongly Held Feelings Concerning PLangs.

I have fruitful arguments about programming with friends.

You just have to find people that enjoy banter and aren't insecure, which isn't very easy.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#49

Post by rgbgraph »

hardware2win wrote: post #34
rgbgraph wrote: post #31

Lovely article -- very original. I'll add some anecdata, to give more context on why "atmosphere at all costs" might be en vogue. - Most software engineering is CRUD - Almost all 3rd generation, higher level languages can achieve CRUD (e.g. Javascript, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl -- even Bash) - Most engineers will not have to dig around in the internals of a language to be able to do their jobs (e.g. t…

Haha, Im on the similar boat I love .NET ecosystem but it sucks that it lacks of fancy jobs that you mentioned. If you want to do compilers with C# then it feels like you have to work for C# Compiler / Roslyn Team(s) For cool jobs there is shitton of CPP which I do think is huge mess and I hope that Rust will steal CPPs market share because my experiences with it were way way more pleasant

Yeah, a lot of the .NET stuff is low-paid, low-challenge big business work (and the only high-visibility "cool" .NET work is at MS).

There's a few positions that intermittently pop-up doing "cool" work in .NET: usually startups, or small teams; the chances are much rarer, and you have to be in the right place at the right time -- but your chances are much greater than someone who's coming in from any other ecosystem (e.g. Javascript back-end).

Or in other words, sniper vs shotgun approach. You're going to get less targets overall if you specialize; but it'll be much easier to have a strong chance of being "the best" in the crop of applicants (or even for marketing purposes, a la personal consultancy).

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#50

Post by quest88 »

andai wrote: post #45
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

The entire point of Go is that it's designed for less talented programmers, i.e. people who can't understand or don't want to put in the effort to understand those things. That's the whole appeal of many programming languages, they massively simplify the mental model (for a price). I've been a lot happier and more productive since I switched to a slow language (which younger me would have been sad to hear).

Yea, competent programmers only write in assembly.
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