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Where have all the hackers gone?
61–70 of 351 posts
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#62My take is simply that programming has gotten way bigger. People seem to think that in the “old days”, programmers ate raw potatoes and programmed in assembly because it put hairs on their chest. The reality is, computers were way simpler objects back then. Assembler on the Intel 4004 has like, 30 opcodes or something. The list fits on your phone screen without scrolling. Modern javascript bundlers pull in more code than entire operating systems back then. C only has about 20 keywords. If you know assembler, you can probably learn K&R C in a weekend if you go hard. Modern C++? Forget it. Apparently the spec just for c++ initialisers is 300 pages long.
Today the same amount of knowledge makes you barely passable in a single niche domain. Consider web development. To get really good at modern web development, you need to know modern javascript, CSS and html. You need to understand how browsers work and all the quirks of how http requests and loads webpages - including what dozens of http headers do and how they interact. You need to understand the browser rendering process, performance tools, accessibility and debugging tools. And learn dozens of javascript libraries, like react, express, webpack, database wrappers, and so on. It’s accomplishment to learn all of that. But if you do, you still only know web programming. That knowledge doesn’t really translate to operating systems work, mobile development, databases, AI, embedded, etc.
Most professional programmers only have the inclination and capacity to learn one ecosystem. And, even then usually with big holes in their knowledge. True polyglots are rare because the mountain you need to climb to get there is higher. But we also depend on polyglots to guide us toward useful tools. Language / ecosystem choice still matters. It matters for performance, velocity, security and compatibility. But how can you really evaluate that stuff unless you’ve spent time debugging Go programs, or tried to squeeze every last drop of performance out of a big legacy Java monolith?
We’re left talking imperfectly from our own experiences. And living in whichever niche of programming we’ve carved out for ourselves. The days of everyone being all terrain programmers is over.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#63Maybe I’ve just fallen out of love with the nitty gritty of programming but this blogger sounds insufferable. If I’m wearing a duck duck go shirt and someone comes up and wants to talk about how DDG uses/used bing I’m not going to engage in this conversation. Who the fuck wants to talk about the Golang GC just because you have a Golang shirt on? Also, how condescending to assume the person doesn’t think about it at all. This sort of monologue is gross and the writer is an asshole.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#64Pablo, turning the question towards you, what would you have liked to know about Elixir up-front before using it to build an authorization server at Ramp? Let's get an honest take.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#65Sorry 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).
You misspelled JavaScript
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#66> Today, we're afraid to do anything that's not JavaScript, Java, Python, or Ruby…Where have all the c̶o̶w̶b̶o̶y̶s̶ hackers gone?
Kids these days want to build games and discord bots. They don’t want to build little text-based adventure games. And if you want to do those things you’re going to use a language that’s mature and has libraries built for that purpose.
I do like the breakdown the author gave. But the “atmosphere” component should not be underestimated: I haven’t given up on any languages but I’ve given up on dependencies because I’ve run into errors that I couldn’t find a solution to online.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#67> Languages with proper concurrency like JVM, BEAM, or Go don't require Sidekiq or Celery queues
This author needs to understand with web/api programming, even using JVM, Go, etc still require Celery/Sidekiq/WakaQ for siloing. You don't want some developer using Go to hog 100% of all webserver CPU doing something concurrently but which should have been done on a background server.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#68[dead]
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#69Sorry 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…
>Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. You are absolutely correct. This place is populated with quite a few nerds. Nerds typically have subpar social skills, which is is both fueled by and results in a lack of empathy. >"I ♥ people; look for ways to make them happy, and empower them." The propaganda arm of the Soviets is called "Pravda",…
You're getting downvoted, but you're right.
>I wanted to talk about its garbage collector (1, 2), its cooperative scheduler that many people think is a preemptive scheduler, its very loose approach to correctness… and he didn't want to talk about any of that.
This is not the way an emotionally intelligent person approaches a conversation. The idea that a conversation should be a demonstration of ones own knowledge is a pretty common notion I see with socially-stunted geek types. Growing up with a narrow or minimal social group will do that, it's no one's fault, but it's a pretty clear indicator this person's advice on interpersonal relationships shouldn't be taken too seriously.
In the same way you can tell immediately from a blogpost that someone is an inexperienced engineer, the takeaway from this one for me is that the author is an inexperienced friend.
Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
#70It's interesting reading stuff like this. I think the author is missing a perspective that all the programming languages that he's listed are old and have stacks of features that were introduced because of feelpinions, fashion and sometimes function.
Complaining about python being slow, or java being verbose and golang being tricky etc. who cares. The stuff people have done in them in highly networked global environments is where a large focus of innovation is. This is the author missing the forest for the trees.