Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

"Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day. Maybe it's Rails or Python or something. Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up. I can't do that for anything I use. Alright, let's say you can do that. You know a myriad of things about the people who make your tools, but can you honestly say you know as much about them as you do about the tools they made you? Be honest with yourself and really look at how much you know about the people behind your gear as you do about the gear itself."

This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even the apartment I live in. And when I do know their names I certainly don't know them better than I do my tools. Why should I want to?

"I still have to do programmer interviews like everyone else. No matter how much code I put out, I still have to solve stupid puzzles about coconuts and manholes. No matter how many web servers or email frameworks or database servers or chat servers or assemblers I write I still have to prove I can code. No matter how many copies of my software get deployed I still have to prove I can make reliable software."

I wouldn't want to comment on what Zed's personal experience is , but I know many programmers who wouldn't have to "prove that they can code". "Fame" sees to correlate inversely with having to jump through hoops. I doubt if anyone really wants to test Linus (or Carmack or DHH or any other "famous" programmer) for "ability to code". Outside the MegaCorp, and especially in startups, a reputation for Open Source contributions helps you avoid stupid questions/tests etc, at least in my limited experience. It is often the undistinguished guy with the undistinguished cv that has to go through the technical nitpick interview.

I think this experience may be somewhat unique to Zed. No harm in that of course. Just pointing out that is far from universal.

Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes. I don't mean that he is crazy or anything, just that the logic in his posts seems increasingly frayed.

"This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even the apartment I live in."

I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.

Of course then he dives off into this strange diatribe about being forced to interview the same way we peons have to despite his previous works - nevermind the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel (most of the devs using it haven't either, for that matter).

I also think he is wrong on this latter point as - even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had.

"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."

I'll agree with you on that one.

the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel

Just wait a minute here! Isn't this weird? It's like hiring designers and refusing to look at their portfolios.

The interview process puts people through all these weird contortions so we can (among other things) get some indirect indications of how they code. Why not just read their code? We want to know if they can collaborate on a project, why not look at the result of projects they collaborated on?

I think in the corporate world at least, programming has become a commodity.

"Why not just read their code?"

I agree. Unfortunately I think interview processes are designed to accommodate the majority of applicants - and in the corporate/enterprise world, the majority of applicants have zero open source work.

I think/hope this will change over time.

I highly doubt that hiring managers are going to have the time to read code. Very few people go through a candidate's code before an interview.

Then I would ask: why is it that designers almost always have their portfolios looked at when they are getting hired? I think we're being slaves to an illogical social pattern.

For one thing, a visual portfolio can be looked through in the time it would take to dig into one complex method.

In the context of is thread, I read this as, "We're trapped in an illogical social pattern, because we are lazy."

I'd agree with that, but I'd prefer the term "energy conserving."

"I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. "

There are famous car/cellphone/guitar designers, (I am not sure about construction workers!) but they (like programmers) are famous within their communities. Even Linus would probably be better recognized by a programmer than a non programmer I think. There are also many many programmers who have contributed to the Linux Kernel and don't have that kind of celebrity. I see this as perfectly fine way for the world to work. Zed seems to expect (or crave) something else.

I agree that engineers of products are often unknown (as people) to their consumers. As other people pointed about that is almost the definition of how a product works, except in very rare cases.

I was addressing Zed's (implied) expectation this state of affairs was somehow surprising, unexpected or bad, and worth bewailing. At least that was the vibe I got from the post.

The idea that we should (in some normative sense, in an ideal world) know the people behind the products we know "better than we know the products" at the risk of being "second class citizens" was what I found bizarre. He takes an obvious truism - most normal people don't know much (or anything) about the creators of the products they use - and then goes off on a rant on how he still gets asked "meaningless" questions for his job interviews. What I was trying to say (no doubt I could have written it down better) is "But that is as it should be".

"People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products."

I mostly agree - except that a good part of their products (or their leadership position on their products or "fame" ) is or results directly from the code they wrote.

" even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had."

That is my experience too.

"The idea that we should (in some normative sense, in an ideal world) know the people behind the products we know "better than we know the products" at the risk of being "second class citizens" was what I found bizarre."

We're in agreement there.

"I mostly agree - except that a good part of their products (or their leadership position on their products or "fame" ) is or results directly from the code they wrote."

Certainly they wouldn't have been famous without coding anything, sure, but at the end of the day the quality of their end result is what mattered - not the code they wrote to get there. Okay, maybe that isn't true so much with DHH due to the nature of Rails... but Carmack is famous because people like to shoot Nazis and zombies. Romero is (okay, _was_) just as famous, and I've never heard much about his programming skills - he seems to be famous purely for having been co-founder of Id.

People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.

I think Zed could've ended this sentence at aren't famous. If you ask anyone who doesn't closely follow tech who these folks are, you're likely to get blank stares. Maybe they'll recognize one of the names, but not be able to list specific achievements.

As plink says, these people are famous within their communities. Just like I don't know who designed the stability systems on my car, someone else might not know who designed the graphics engine for Doom.

I do find it interesting that Zed writes a piece about how there are no famous programmers, while simultaneously being voted to the top of HN and (again, in his sphere) being a fairly well-known name.

OTOH, many people think that every cool innovation from Apple comes straight out from Steve Jobs' brain.

Maybe not, but it goes through Steve's brain and stop there if he does not like it, and that has served Apple well.

Sure. Though Jonathan Ive has gotten a fair amount of credit/exposure of the years, too, for the industrial design side of things.

"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."

I don't think this one is that weird. It is a logical extension of the rant about not getting paid:

http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html

when he found out how many people were using Mongrel commercially without even putting him in the credits.

Which is a childish rant (like most of his posts).

He chose a license that explicitly permitted what he's complaining about, and then cries that what happened within his own terms of usage...isn't what he had hoped for. If you want money for your code, you explicitly ask for it via an employment agreement or a software license.

He's weird because he's obviously intelligent, due to the code he's demonstrated, but at the same time, he fails so hard at anticipating the obvious repercussions of his actions (i.e. his "Rails is Ghetto" debacle he's trying to pass off as a joke post).

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