The Programmer Hierarchy | Hacker News Reader

The Programmer Hierarchy

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34 pointsjarrodvanda15 comments

The way programmers see each other was especially good in the "language matrix" : http://i.imgur.com/1gF1j.jpg

I like how the only difference between Java and Ruby to a Lisp guy is Sarah Palin's boobs.

Odd conflict, I did not find this [Funny] even though the title promised such.

The better map would represent this as a doubly linked circular list since pretty much any type of programmer considers the language they are most effective in to make them superior to every other sort of programmer.

I don't know what it is about programming as a profession, but something which ought to be humbling (have you ever created a bug-free program of any consequence?), produces a surprisingly large number of people who are insufferably arrogant out of all proportion to their accomplishments.

Or perhaps the arrogance is defensive, and is built around the fear of being found out as a fallible human being, not some godlike creator.

Glad to see Java programmers were right where they belong.

Java's now 2 orders of magnitude below Visual Basic? Do I smell a reflective relationship in there?

Shouldn't clojure be at the very top there, on the left above lisp? ;)

Smalltalk is conspicuously absent.

Shouldn't Verilog/VHDL be on top? :)

Hehe, good point. How about the soldering iron then? Or the wire-wrap gun?

don't Agda, ATS, epigram and Coq programmers look down their noses at haskell

Smalltalk is probably absent because they're happy and productive and don't care about other languages. I have to say my Smalltalk years were full of more,"Look what I made!" vs. "Look what I got the computer to do!"

An alternative explanation is that there are no longer any Smalltalk programmers who don't also belong to one of the other groups. :(

Am I the only one here who has a broad smattering of skills in that graph (around about C, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, HTML etc.) and don't see myself inferior/superior to anyone on that list? Incompetent programmers are incompetent no matter what language they use to (not) get the job done.

I dont see a lot of Java/Pascal animosity, although as a full time Rubyist I could at least tip my hat at the arrogance. I'd say ObjC and Flash/Flex/Fusion are absent and would put the Ruby guys on their feet - simply because these guys (on average) make 20k more.

I'd expect it to be more of a cyclic graph in reality.

Clojure: superior from both Lisp and Java ends ^_-

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