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Comment by zed88 | Hacker News Reader

I can speak of similarities. Both in India and China, programmers are basically 'bred' out of an assembly line like education system. Which means you find programmers with no passion or love of their craft. Which means it's rare to find good natural programmers, which you do in western countries because it's pretty much based on meritocracy rather than degrees.This shows in code quality and how projects are handled.

So from my point of view its a cultural problem in both countries where the likes of IIT graduates are preferred over a simpleton with great passion, skill and knowledge of the craft.

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> So from my point of view its a cultural problem in both countries where the likes of IIT graduates are preferred over a simpleton with great passion, skill and knowledge of the craft.

Oh yeah and when the genius group of "IITians" dont write good code, the definition of good code is changed. I have literally seen this shit. Highly unreadable C++ code from a bunch of IITians went through flawlessly and got merged. The code written had the same readability as the code which you seen in Topcoder or Codechef.

> Which means it's rare to find good natural programmers, which you do in western countries because it's pretty much based on meritocracy rather than degrees

Not disagreeing. Natural programmers do exist in plenty outside the IITs. They need to be nurtured. The educational system does not help. Not that many companies, in the US too, put that much effort into grooming talented individuals anymore. But when they do, there's payoff.

> programmers are basically 'bred' out of an assembly line like education system. Which means you find programmers with no passion or love of their craft.

Every educated programmer in the country, passionate or not, goes through the same education system. If you like the work and are good at it, you'll do it with love and care when you're a professional, no matter how you were educated. I went through it myself, and I like to think I've done all right career-wise.

> good natural programmers

I'm not even sure what "natural" means in this context. If someone is a good programmer, does it matter if they are naturally talented or attained their skill by grinding? (and most of the time it's a combination of the two anyway). To quote a popular Westworld meme, "If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"

> where the likes of IIT graduates are preferred over a simpleton with great passion, skill and knowledge of the craft.

Evaluating programmer talent in the timespan of an interview is hard. Of course, hiring an IIT grad is going to be preferred over taking a punt on a random candidate - assuming both candidates are at the beginning of their career. It's not a cultural problem unique to India or China - hiring based on educational pedigree happens in every country in the world.

Which means you find programmers with no passion or love of their craft.

The vast, vast majority of programmers in the entire world work 9-5 then go home and don't think about work, same as the vast majority of accountants, lawyers, dentists, bricklayers, retail workers and everyone else in every other profession. HN, SO, GH are all tiny niches really, but if you're inside them they look like the whole world.

I don’t think those networks you mention are good measures at all. Most of the great and passionate devs I know are not prolific on those sites. IMHO those sites are more often for new people to tech who like to showboat, and are likely to move on to something else that feeds their ego.

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