Hacker News Reader

I disagree with this sentiment, I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good.

(I also think there's a huge spectrum of people between these two "types" of developers)

"Because of this, it's very hard to tell as people get older which camp they came from."

I agree, and I think that's a great thing. Being a hacker at a young age is awesome, and should be encouraged, but there are a lot of people who don't know what they're good at (or love) until later in life. In my experience people newer to the industry (at least on the level of "hacker at 13" vs college or later) often have less ego on them, and are more down to Earth about what they do.

I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good.

If we slightly re-write parent's argument to remove the elitism and focus on the people it's possible to see the same message without the baggage.

Focused study can level the groups, but regardless of how people get there, the quality of any graduating class has a roughly bi-modal distribution. One group is the students who kept up in class, knew what they were doing, and learned a lot. It doesn't matter if they had experience going in, or worked hard to make up for lost time. And the other group half-assed it just well enough to make it over the finish line. Or to rephrase again - you had people who wanted (for whatever reason) a skillset that is marketable, and a group that thought they could buy a ticket to a good jobs.

From what I've seen, it is always the other way around. It's the hacker who learned the culture on IRC who is the most likely to get swept away by fads. Circa 2004, they think everything should be Ruby On Rails. Circa 2008, they tell you that SQL databases are obsolete and everyone should use NoSQL databases. Circa 2012 they tell you that Ruby on Rails is obsolete and everyone should use NodeJS. They consider themselves "plugged in" and up-to-date, and they are the most vulnerable to the fads.

Meanwhile, I knew a woman who first became a nurse and only second took up computer programming, to write software to track maternity progress, and she has no interest in the hype cycle, instead she just writes good, simple code that gets the job done.

And I know a guy who started as a statistician, and who later became a programmer so he could do serious data analysis. He doesn't get distracted by the flavor of the week. He sticks with good Python tools and he writes the code he needs to get the job done.

I think you two are talking about two different kinds of people.

Surprisingly, different IRC communities tend to attract different mentalities. I think that fact alone invalidates much of unsayable's argument. I've participated in IRC communities where the focus was on fads, and I've been in communities where the focus was overwhelmingly on security and methodology.

Why can't someone who grew up on hacker culture then go to university and learn engineering and theory? I think both are necessary to a degree. The hacker stuff gives people an instinct and facility, but fills them with bad information. That's fine in high school, but not working on my project.

The worst of the worst!

That said, I am one. And I don't think I'm that bad. I code with security in mind, I suppose a positive side to IRC PTSD I acquired at 16! Uni got me into thinking about testing while I code, and DBMS + algo + opsys courses Didn't hurt either. The math though... Wish I was quicker. But being a hacker has a disadvantage there I think in my case. I struggled due to not paying attention to math classes while defending our irc network against floods and tinkering with Linux and bsd. Not sure where that puts me on the list.

I didn't start programming until the shockingly (!!!!) late age of 23 or so. I hated my first year computer science papers with a passion. But it's grown to be something I love, and I like to consider myself at least adopted by the culture. I owe a lot of my skills to patient, older hackers on IRC and very much consider myself part of that 'tribe'.

I also think what you fail to take into account is that peoples software skills often plateau. They'll soak up lots of stuff in the first 3 years then won't have any motivation to improve because they're good enough. I'd argue that attitude is much more an indication of skill than n number of years programming.

So in a sense I do kind of understand your bias. Our field is full of people who decided "the pay is pretty decent and they were always kind of good with computers.". But it's entirely possible to become a "hacker" at later age.

(Also as an aside, I wish more people would post controversial stuff on their main account. They're just make-believe internet points).

Dude I'm enthusiast from way back. Woke up every day vibrating in anticipation of getting a little 1:1 time with a Plato terminal or a VT-52, or maybe a TRS-80. Whatever I could... Didn't matter. We sweated over Knuth's books and dreamed of the day we could get access to a really big computer.

Nearly 40 years later I recognize fellow perpetual students during job interviews. To be fair I'm hiring for sys admin roles these days but the principle is the same: there are people with two years of butt-in-seat time who know more than folks with ten.

Now imagine how excited I am to meet a fellow perpetual student with 10, 15, or 20 years of experience!

I upvoted you because I think what you're saying is one of the reasons for ageism among young people towards older people. Heck I used to be like that! I've been tinkering around on computers since my pre teens. But as I get older, and work with a larger variety of people, I've learned that there are plenty of very competent engineers who only got into computers at University - late bloomers.

It's not black and white only. There's a third group -- a combination of the two mentioned, who were hackers from the young age and got a good education. Also, there are people coming from other disciplines that can make very good experts in certain areas, as other commenters have mentioned.

I started hacking with my little computer at 16 in mid 80s (it was the time computers became cheap enough where I live) then I went to study CS at university because I liked programming and it looked like a good career. In which camp does that leave me?