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Comment by mtnygard | Hacker News Reader

> programmers use “die” to mean “decline in relative marketshare”, not absolute marketshare. Lots of thot leaders bemoan how few devs understand really low-level systems anymore, but there are more kernel hackers in total than there were 30 years ago. They’re just a lower percentage of all developers.

This is such a great point!

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UML is dying though. I remember being grilled during job interviews on OOP design questions with UML and all those obscure details. I hate it. But now even the embedded world is more about API contracts with system designs and data stores.

Very informal boxes and arrows with random annotations have proven far more effective than a fully specified visual language.

Yeah. API contracts are real (and sometimes even formalized to one or another degree with TLA+, IDLs like WSDL, and various other tools); UML was a fraud: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959307

Wait, "thot leaders"? Lol, I don't think that means what OP thinks it means.

…Goddamn it. I guess I'm an old now.

EDIT: Turns out it was not intentional, see below, now fixed on the post.

(original): Given how well-written the rest of the article is, I have to believe that's deliberate.

Plenty of English spelling simply doesn't make sense, "thought" is a good example of that. I'm ambivalent on vigilante spelling reforms, will have to think about it more. :-D

Typoing "thought leader" as a way to poke fun at them was deliberate, typoing it in a way that's also slang for a prostitute was completely unintentional and something I wouldn't have done if I knew. Changed it to something else for that reason.

I always thought it was slang for a woman who wasn't ashamed of her own sexuality, but of course people (not you specifically) would manage to turn that into a pejorative :/

I propose we use that as a term for what are today called Instagram influencers.

If that was a quote it seems to have been edited. Anyway it seems to be a common spelling among a few people I met in Singapore, maybe due to this (now renamed) chain, or maybe the spelling preceded it.

https://www.asiaone.com/digital/after-years-online-ridicule-...

It's cost/benefit as far as kernel hackers vs. low-level systems devs. To get a job writing at a kernel level at a commercial company, you need what? A masters degree, at least, plus experience? Minimum, to even be considered. A decent dev job, you bang it out using a high level language and move into a management position and are making more than that kernel dev position, anyways.

That "hacker" who has studied the kernel, knows that if you can compromise the kernel and gain root, all the other programs fall because your password keychain will be exposed, and no one keeps track of their own passwords anymore. Hackers don't need a resume or interview and references as a barrier for entry, it's a skills test.

I sound like I'm romanticizing the "hacker", but I wouldn't want to be one. If you get caught, these days, you're hosed. Not to mention, a lot of them are state sponsored from not very nice states, so to speak.

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