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Comment by sekou | Hacker News Reader

> artisanal, shade-grown code doesn’t scale to large engineering organizations

Some leeway could me made around that statement. People who work in fishing and agricultural industries for example could benefit from unique and specially crafted services when it comes to job search and fulfillment. There is a certain effectiveness in the one-size-fits-all approach of applications like Facebook but it could stand to exist within a more diverse ecosystem.

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> Some leeway could me made around that statement.

What do you mean? Who needs the leeway?

(I suspect "artisanal, shade-grown code" just means "bad", but perhaps stated in a more PR-friendly way.)

> People who work in fishing and agricultural[...]

What are you talking about?

I've known several people who work in fishing (fish farming, specifically), and I can assure you that they weren't particularly concerned about "job search" or "fulfillment". They were concerned about maximizing profit amidst the intense competition.

Can you relate what your fish-worker acquaintances/friends told you?

I thought "artisanal, shade-grown code" was such a delightful phrase. I took it to mean not bad, but rather too costly for practical/mass use. Like some people can afford to buy $6 lattes, and those are likely very tasty lattes, but Folgers is going to move more beans.

This is what I took it to mean. It wouldn't be horrible if Starbucks was the only option for coffee, but take away all the small cafes and you miss out on a lot. There may be some trouble with that analogy but the idea is there's value in specialization.

I think it's referencing middle-out compression.

It's an amazing phrase. AFAICT it doesn't actually mean anything. I certainly understand why such a high-profile developer would choose such a "bland, yet poetic" phrasing; my issue is just with trying to interpret it as somehow insightful.

it pretty clearly meant "code that has been lovingly handcrafted to the specifications of the problem", as opposed to "churned out using a mass-production framework". the analogy works for me.

I don't know how technology can best help people in different places make money and find the work they want. I think the author is saying that economies of scale helps bigger companies deliver better products and services, but I think moving forward on the other end by enabling the development of specialized software can also be beneficial. In fact by continuing to work on Ember I think the author is actually doing this.

So what were you doing with that whole "fishing" bit?

(I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with your position, I just don't think you should try to support it with entirely fictitious examples.)

Honestly I just wrote the first two fields that came to my head when I thought of something LinkedIn isn't particularly optimized for. It may have helped to mention that.

That would have helped a lot :).

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