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I've worked for a very long time in software, network infrastructure and now Internet payments (complex stuff too) and mobile.

I've never heard a manager or developer say: If only we had someone that could write an algorithm to solve this travelling sales person problem we'd be saved! No. Inefficient algorithms are often good enough, typical programmers muddle through and yes pick up a textbook or reference wikipedia once in a while.

Modern software is a complex tangle of standards, protocols, and technologies. To build a typical example modern web application you're going to need to know linux administration, database administration, some server side language (ruby), a web framework in that language (ruby on rails), javascript (perhaps coffeescript), html, css (less), message queues (redis, beanstalk, etc), caches (varnish), loadbalancing proxies (haproxy), SSL termination, web application firewalls, network firewalls, providing JSON REST API's, Mobile optimization, real time communication (socket.io), third party API integration, Amazon S3 management and scaling. Etc.

All of this lifts the benchmark for what is an acceptable web app. The list goes on, and new bits keep getting added every year along with expectations.

It's bloody hard to find people that can deal with a majority of the above technologies. If you find someone that can do the full stack they're gold.

You want to be valuable? Prove that you're someone that can develop within modern software stacks and more importantly adapt as things change. Because change is coming, the music hasn't stopped and we're in for one hell of a ride.

"I've never heard a manager or developer say: If only we had someone that could write an algorithm to solve this travelling sales person problem we'd be saved! No. Inefficient algorithms are often good enough, typical programmers muddle through and yes pick up a textbook or reference wikipedia once in a while."

Exactly, or google it and find the difference between between the different sorts, or look at any one of the great visual representations of sorting strategies. I've seen otherwise very accomplished coders throw up a crappy bubble sort and move on because it just didn't matter. And it didn't. In any case, 95% of the time those sorts have already been implemented in your Hash object or database or somewhere else in your languages collections library.

I've been doing this...Good Lord nearly 15 years now -- mostly in the middle-tier and lower, so I've had plenty of opportunity -- and I can't even fill up one hand with the number of times that I had a problem that required anything beyond rudimentary algorithmic analysis, much less a deep examination of sorting efficiencies, etc. Those are solved, cut-and-paste problems, the least of your worries.

The list of technologies you give is spot on. I'd add to that: good data modeling/object design, testing/TDD (if you're into that), security issues to be aware of (XSS, SQL injection, mass assignment), classic performance killers like n+1 queries, on and on.

And yes, the change bit -- as a coder you can never assume you've learned your craft. You're always learning it. We're not blacksmiths that get better and better at one thing over the years and arrive at something like "mastery."

We're attention-deficit polymaths that have to scramble week-in, week-out just to maintain competence on the current problem, while anticipating the trends that will be turning the apple cart over a year from now. Remember in 2008 or so when RIA was the buzz-cronym and everyone was talking Silverlight, Flash and the lot? And 4 years from now who knows what the acronyms will be. We may all be laughing about how awesome we thought HTLM5 was going to be (probably not, but in this business...)

If someone gave me a sort implementation in a code review, I'd have to seriously wonder how the heck that person got hired. Libraries exist for a reason.

Sorting is a good example, though, because it is often complicated not because the algorithm is hard, but because the sorting criteria rely on heterogeneous data, sometimes coming from multiple services. Coming up with a clean code design in such cases is challenging, and that's where good developers shine.

You got that right. It's strange though that most programmers are never taught half that stuff in college. Hardcore computer science may be different but related degrees basically walk you through C++, teach you some OO design patterns and let you loose in the world. In my experience every single programmer I've ever met that relies solely on their college education for their work doesn't know half that stuff! Now I'm talking about people who "specialize" in web development here to be clear. They know some HTML, JavaScript or ASP and that's about it. The command line is mostly foreign to them and they rely on a lot of pointing and clicking to create anything rather than digging into some code and settling in with a cozy text editor.

Then there are the ones I've met who picked up some books, read the tutorials, and got their hands dirty with some code completely outside their degree which was in something totally unrelated and those are the ones who totally amaze me with their skill. Even a lot of the big web development companies around me are WYSIWYGing their way through client work!

It just totally astounds me and your comment and this article are making me ask myself (again) why is that? Is what I describe normal? I'm in Chicago and maybe outside the Valley things are different? Has anyone else seen what I described or is my experience just a fluke? If its anywhere near common I'd be a little disturbed.

> Is what I describe normal?

100%, at least in my country.

Thanks for your feedback. As far as the meaning of the article, I wasn't trying to prove a point as much as elucidate something I was thinking about yesterday: the skills you pick up through entrepreneurship.

For the past 4-5 years of my life (starting in high school and continuing through college) I've been concentrating a lot of my time learning how to be a better entrepreneur. That's to the detriment of almost everything else in my life. And it's worth it to me because I love it. Even better still, it seems like a pretty safe bet because worse comes to worse and I completely fail over the next few years I'll still be able to get a job as a coder somewhere.

But the thing about being an entrepreneur is that it encourages you to get marginally good at a wide range of skills instead of REALLY good at one area. And so something I was thinking about is the potential consequences of this decision on my life. This is what I came up with.

> But the thing about being an entrepreneur is that it encourages you to get marginally good at a wide range of skills instead of REALLY good at one area.

Being marginally good at many things show that no matter what gets thrown at you, you'll pick it up fast. This is necessary in entrepreneurship and it becomes ever more necessary elsewhere as the pace of software development increases.

There's no such thing as "algorithms" skills anyway. No matter what skills you have, you'll probably need to adapt them heavily to whatever new job you find yourself in.

Yes, we're mainly startup-ish people around here, but I'm pretty sure that even if I wasn't on, I'd hire a jack of all trades with a proven track record over skills in "math" and "algorithms", whatever that means.

Most multi-skilled people i know (and i include myself) would not be happy dedicating their time and talents to a single thing. Although its not a technical limitation, i would say the reasoning makes sense to me.

Amazing article. I can relate.

I too am an entrepreneur who sold one company and am well onto my second one. (Though the fact that you've sold multiple companies is damn impressive!) Running your own company means you have to wear many hats and its tough to get really good at just one thing. Some days you are a graphic designer, or developer, or marketing, etc.

However, I also think it's boring to be stuck in one specific area for a long time. I like to be challenged, and I am constantly learning new things to broaden my knowledge. Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen.

Your story is the state of reality now for certain types of programming jobs. Here in DC there are plenty of government contractors who don't care how much demonstrated success a person has shown as a tech entrepreneur; they want a guy with a CS degree and 10 years enterprise Java experience ONLY. The folks who work these types of jobs are your classic middle-age engineers. They read a lot of documentation, have a lot of meetings, and don't much care about being agile or fast.

The reason people here on HN are objecting to your story is that there are ALSO coding jobs for startups, PR firms, or consumer brands where they DO value entrepreneurship, speed, and creativity. And these types of jobs will never go away. Edelman or Nike is never going to convert their development shops to all CS Ph.D.s with 15 years experience optimizing compilers. They're always going to be building interesting interactive projects for major brands, so they need people who are always restlessly finding the next cool thing.

So just make sure you always apply for the latter kind of coding job and you should be good.

I agree. The notion that we've already peaked in the number of profitable places to apply software is ridiculous. And that's what it will take for them to have "too many qualified candidates".

In the mid-80s people tried to tell me that software was too crowded, that there were too many people going into it and that I was unlikely to have the career my dad had. They were partly right: I've been even more in demand than he was.

Software development salaries are crazy high right now, which is a sign of a ton of suppressed demand. The web is far from done. Mobile is still rising. We are just getting started on the "internet of things". And that's only on the consumer side. Business is not going to be less dependent on software, and the ever-more-networked world is shortening cycles and increasing competitive pressure, meaning business software needs to change more often.

Yes, by all means, people should keep on learning. But the "gosh you'll be fucked in a few years if you don't go back for your CS degree right now" thing is BS.

Thanks for commenting! As mentioned elsewhere on this thread I'm not really trying to say that you need a CS degree to be a good programmer. But I think concentrating on programming vs concentrating on entrepreneurship leads to different results. And so I was thinking about the consequences of that concentration and what that could look like in a few years.

I definitely wasn't saying that this is definitely what's going to happen. In fact I really don't think I'm going to be applying for jobs in 4 years. But I thought it was an interesting scenario to write about and get people's thoughts on.

Exactly. Everything is becoming a software problem. Dispense coffee? Make a rug? Drive a car? They'll eventually all be software problems. Businesses are being limited by their ability to understand and adopt software by the supply of talent. This will continue for a long time and it'll be people that can integrate complex systems that will solve them, not academic algorithm experts (whomever they are).

Firstly a tiny amount of people know C, C++, Java, Python & Ruby

What does it mean to "know" a language? I've been writing almost exclusively in C for 15 years, but I wouldn't say that I "know" C; at least once a month I end up needing to consult the C99 standard for some obscure point of library specification.

On the other hand, there's a lot of people who know how to write Hello World in all those languages and consider that to constitute "knowing" them. Would you hire all of them?

Oh come now, you would say that you know C (even if you're unwilling to say you "know" it for the purposes of debate). You don't have to have a language memorized to "know" it, and you don't "know" it if all you can do is write Hello World.

The answer is somewhere in between. My personal metric is: do you have a reasonably accurate estimation of what you don't know. The better you know a language, the better you know what you don't know.

>My personal metric is: do you have a reasonably accurate estimation of what you don't know.

That's a pretty good measure of how well you know any subject actually. You could call it the "Dunning–Kruger metric".

If you really knew what you were talking about, you'd express more doubt about whether it's actually a good measure of how well you know any subject :)

I "know english" but I still need to consult a thesaurus or dictionary from time to time. I believe there are standard tests you can work through to determine your level of fluency (at least as far as that standard is concerned). But that isn't really necessary. If you know that you are consulting the C99 standard for "obscure" specifications then it's safe to say you know the language. If you need an official standard, they are there.

  >> What does it mean to "know" a language?

My definition is that it is a language you would be willing to start a new project on, given a tight deadline.

Every job I have interviewed for in the past five years had "C, C++, Java, Python & Ruby" or a close equivalent as a basic requirement, not hire on the spot. (Before then, Python and Ruby weren't as widespread, and Java wasn't totally universal yet) But yeah, it is on the higher end (large web companies paying top quartile compensation) of the industry.

You are definitely not talking about the jobs this kid will be interviewing for 2 years out of college, which is the context of the piece.

Sorry, but no.

People who know Java really well tend to not really know C++ even if they put it on their resume. Unless you count "how hard can it be" knowledge. Same the other way around. People who know C++ really well think "how hard can it be".

Modern C++ is a very complicated beast, most people who claim to know it but do not have solid experience usually don't. Modern Java is a huge tower of libraries and concepts, so it's the same.

...until you cross a certain age. The first generation of Java programmers were C++ refugees from the 90s. While C++ has advanced a little since then, it really hasn't changed that much.

I would never hire someone based on the libraries they are familiar with. In fact, the next time I interview someone, I'm planning on giving them some sort of "here's a totally unfamiliar API, do XYZ with it" problem. And they can find the documentation on the web themselves.

The first generation of Java programmers were C++ refugees from the 90s. While C++ has advanced a little since then, it really hasn't changed that much.

You should have a look at C++11 if you haven't already.

Totally agree on CRUD applications. I would like a nice library app for my local library. Look at the comments on the iPhone app:

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/bookmyne/id350625461?mt=8

> Keeps saying "no enum const class".

> Firstly a tiny amount of people know C, C++, Java, Python & Ruby. If you found someone with that lot I'd probably hire them on the spot.

I fit your description in full. What is your offer? You can find my contact information in my hacker news profile.

> thoughts on programming, startups and entrepeneurship by a college sophomore

Well, at least he's honest about it. As a student you might hope the stuff that you learned was worth anything I have serious doubts now.

Sharepoint is a few steps closer to that compare to Rails/Java these days assuming your companies decided to adopt it wholeheartedly.