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Comment by tommorris | Hacker News Reader

It really isn't. Can we please stop the 'superhero' meme?

I'm not a superhero. I'm just a person who knows a few programming languages and can hack things together. It's not a great feat: it's just typing bits of logic into a computer. If you can think logically and with a reasonable degree of abstraction, you can do it too!

We should be shouting from the rooftop that it's fun and easy and giving children lessons in Python or whatever, not turning ourselves in to a priesthood just to boost our own egos.

The best sort of superheros are modest and work quietly in the background rather than shouting about how awesome they are. Can we try that?

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I think that I may not have made my point clear. The point is not that we are superheroes for knowing how to program, but rather than learning to program is so cool that it's like having a super power, for what it enables you to build and do. If you read the article, you'll see that I mention how even "product guys" should learn how to program. In my next post, for example, I'll talk about how to learn programming as an absolute beginner. When it comes to programming I try to take a stance as far as possible from elitism.

Carpentry is a Super Power. The point is not that we are superheros for knowing how to build, but rather that learning to build is so cool that its like having a super power, for what it enables you to build and do.

Carpentry is a super power. Just about every girlfriend I've had has been very turned on by guys who can build things with their hands; my brother made a (successful) engagement ring out of 5 different kinds of Amazonian hardwoods that looked amazing. I think people like _why would agree that learning to create things, regardless of the medium, is so cool that it's like having a super power.

By this standard, pretty much anything that doesn't involve trivial desk job paper pushing is a super power. Bricklaying? Check. Welding? Check. Mech eng? Check. Digging ditches? Check. Everyone's special, Dash.

I see a fairly natural superpower line with welding and mechanical engineering (alongside machining or some rapid prototyping ability) on one side, and bricklaying, ditch digging, etc. on the other side.

Bricklayers and ditch diggers don't often think of something cool and then make it happen with those particular skills.

I've been learning to weld (using the TIG process) and it does have that cool mixture of being able to produce amazing, strong physical objects and also being Dark Magick for the average person. The TIG process in particular is a mixture of science and art that makes you feel like a wizard when you start getting good at it.

Watching a professional bricklayer work is pretty mesmerizing. The really good ones achieve this rhythmic action where they seem to manage to quickly and accurately place and set every brick while taking advantage of inertia of the moving bricks to expend the minimum physical energy possible.

I don't think there are any ditchdiggers left in the united states though, only bobcat or backhoe operators.

I've seen robotic welders, but I've yet to see robotic bricklayers.

Bricklayers have built buildings that have lated longer than the IT industry has existed.

I see a fairly natural superpower line with welding and mechanical engineering (alongside machining or some rapid prototyping ability)

For some reason that reminded me of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uQz_V0sbI

Watching the complex and beautiful movements of the various parts of the engine, the raw power, the drama, it took superhumans to figure this out, to contain tons of iron and steel, and water, and fire and turn it into something so exquisite and powerful.

Bricklaying (and construction methods in general) let us build useful, comfortable buildings that protect us from the elements and let us build cities. Agriculture lets us feed our whole population; without modern agriculture we would have mass famine. And while we're on the subject of agriculture, there are some supporting technologies that we shouldn't forget; the Haber-Bosch process, for example, has the power to miraculously convert nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia that we can use as fertilizer, on an industrial scale. Without it, we would starve.

We take all this stuff for granted, but damn it, don't these count as super-powers?

Yeah. And without organizers and managers the complex system is likely to collapse, and without truck drivers and rail workers food can't get to people choose to live. Don't me wrong - I appreciate the complexity of society as much as the next guy, but there's so many people involved that calling everything necessary for people not to starve "super powers" causes the term to completely wash out.

Everyone's special. Which is another way of saying no one is.

Whoosh.

Yeah, but who will then take care of repairing our bicycles?

> The point is not that we are superheroes for knowing how to program, but rather than learning to program is so cool that it's like having a super power, for what it enables you to build and do

Programming isn't a super power. It isn't even like a super power. It's a skill.

It's like any other skill: when you're good at it, it allows you to do things nobody else can do, and you make difficult and challenging tasks look effortless.

I know you say you're standing away from elitism, but things like "even "product guys" should learn how to program" certainly smacks of it. There's no doubt, programming computers is pretty astounding. But so is cold-calling someone and convincing them to give you thousands of dollars for software they may never have heard of. So is building and maintaining the hardware that modern software runs atop.

On that same note, can we also stop with the false-modesty meme? A lot of what we do is actually pretty cool and it does take a certain amount of smarts, hard word, and yes even talent to be at the top of your game. There's nothing wrong with saying so or being proud of it.

OK, no more false-modesty. Only judicious humility from here on out.

The same is true of doctors, accountants and lawyers but they're not running around calling themselves superheroes, ninjas or rockstars like a bunch of thirteen year old boys.

It's not about false modesty, it's about being vaguely adult once you get into your twenties.

[Goes back to playing video games and ordering D&D manuals on eBay.]

About a month ago I wrote on Twitter: "Does your IT company provide drugs, alcohol, and groupies? How about katanas? No? Then you aren't hiring rockstars or ninjas."

As you can see I'm the first one to be oppose to meaningless names. However the point of the article was not about labeling ourselves as super heroes. It was about inspiring new comers to take the plunge because programming, in this information age, allows you to do incredible things as if you had a super power.

This is akin to a doctor blogging about how you can be a hero and save lives if you go into the medical field. It's supposed to inspire new people, not putting ourselves on a pedestal and literally say "I'm a super hero because of my profession".

Katana were too long for a ninja - they'd more likely use a Ninjato which was shorter... [Puts geek credentials away and gets back to the point]

Yes programming is great and useful but I think super power is overstating it and is just meaningless, sightly immature hyperbole.

If people want programming to be attractive and interesting to more people then they should possibly think about not using super hero, fantasy and sci-fi metaphors as they only serve to re-enforce the view that most non-programmers have rather than do anything to dispel it.

This isn't really having a go at you, more the a culture that exists within certain sections of the programming community. Don't get me wrong, I still play D&D and video games, and I still read comics (though in trade hardback these days). There's nothing wrong with these things but they're not things which most people are interested in and are therefore not a great way of making programming seem cool or interesting beyond a very very small group, most of which are already working in it.

I think the point is that the super hero meme is specifically targeting the group of people who are already aligned with much of your stereotypical "geek" culture. The difference is that nowadays there are so many avenues to take following this path that won't necessarily end up at programming. I think the point that cicero made here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2350004 is crucial.

There was a time where being "into" computers meant you inevitably became exposed to programming concepts and eventually dabbled in a bit of it. That's no longer the case. It's helpful to reach out to this group of potentials and show them how awesome it can be to bend the computer to your will. It's just a matter of speaking the language of the group you're trying to reach. I think the superhero metaphor is a good one.

But that's my point - if you're going to reach out to a group of people who are currently outside the norm for computing, you might want to use metaphors and ideas that will resonate with them, not the idea of superheroes which is frankly one which resonates with pretty much the same people who are already attracted to the industry.

We absolutely should be selling the industry and the career - the best teams I've worked in have always been diverse (in pretty much every respect) but you're not going to do that with this sort of pitch.

I'll be showing this article to my high school computer science students to try to raise the excitement level among some of them.

Programming is hard enough that kids have to be pretty motivated to choose to do it. At our school, Computer Science is an elective at the High School level, and it is more difficult than many of the other courses they could take. Although most of our students think computers are cool, they also think they know all they need to know about computers without having to wrestle with the tediousness of getting the syntax right and figuring out why their programs are locking up.

I learned to program as a kid because in the late 70s, that was about the only thing you could do with a computer. I was lazy enough as a teenager that if I had an Xbox 360, iPhone, and other electronic distractions, I might not have bothered.

Now I find that I have rather deep knowledge about a technology that permeates our lives today. I would like my students to get excited enough about gaining that kind of knowledge that they will do the hard work it takes to reach such a goal. I think it could help if I put into their imaginations the idea of getting a superpower.

We could, but I doubt it would work. I acquired interest in programming after I realised it was a powerful skill to have. I remain interested because every so often, I am amazed at the results it can produce. While I do not believe it is actually a superpower, I think it might be productive to market it as one - one that YOU, too, could possess. I don't think the majority of kids want to be modest and work quietly in the background, but I think most kids have fantasised about being superheroes. I mean, many adults still act out superhero roles by playing RPGs.

I agree with your characterization of programming, but I think a lot of people are taking this too seriously.

Obviously programming isn't a superhero ability, as superheroes do not exist. It's exciting and awesome to learn to be able to do the things we do, and that's what I took away from the article.

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