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Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

He's one of the most prominent React core developers. The author of Redux etc. Many JavaScript and React developers (myself included) consider him a rockstar.

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You don’t think that’s a problem? I don’t think there’s any value in being a name in programming. There is certainly value in a dollar sense (to their own career prospects at least), but I don’t understand why people would be like “wow! It’s $name! They’re famous!”

If someone non-junior knew no shell scripting and had no FP knowledge — or thought that JavaScript counts as FP [spoiler alert: it doesn’t] — I wouldn’t hire them.

Personally I’m not saying JavaScript “counts” as FP — which is why the post says “unless _you_ count”. ;-) But there are certainly FP subcultures in the JS community which only use the functional subset:

https://github.com/jfmengels/eslint-plugin-fp

https://github.com/fantasyland/fantasy-land

https://ramdajs.com/

That subculture is what I was referring to.

If you’re splitting hairs over such definitions without acknowledging the cultural aspect and use that as a hiring criteria I wouldn’t want to work with you either.

Culture means different things to different people. If a candidate were to suggest they were only interested in the “pragmatic parts of FP”, implying that developing an understanding of category theory is somehow frivolous and not pragmatic (which I think you did earlier), I would acknowledge this as a poor culture fit.

you're arguing with the guy that built redux and he's being nice about it. you think maybe you should reconsider your position?

I’m well aware of who I am addressing. It seems you’re implying we should make special allowances for people depending on how popular they are. My entire point is that I won’t take someone at their name; I completely reject the idea of the “celebrity” programmer. Redux is pretty neat; IIRC it was a state store influenced by Elm and implemented in about 50 lines of JavaScript. But there are plenty of developers — even popular open-source contributors — who don’t have the same anti-intellectual position of rejecting CT because it isn’t “pragmatic”.

my point is exactly not how popular he is but how accomplished he is and how condescending he could be (since he is so popular and accomplished) and how gracious he is being to you. it's like those movies where someone is starting a fight (giving cause) with a person 10x their size and then the bigger person gracefully declining to batter - it should make you reconsider who's the protagonist...

So yes, you are exactly giving special treatment to someone you perceive to be of greater merit owing to their popularity.

Your position is that I should not argue against Dan Abramov because you perceive him to be relatively accomplished. This is an embarrassing point of view.

Burn your idols.

> who don’t have the same anti-intellectual position of rejecting CT because it isn’t “pragmatic”

Where are you getting anti-intellectualism, rejection of category theory, or a defense of pragmatism at the expense of either of those things? Who is this directed at?

Reading back up this thread, you're the only person referring to those, unless I'm missing an edit somewhere.

You had me worried for a moment; I also couldn't find where I had read that, so I thought either I had misquoted him or he had edited something.

But, no. Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783434

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