Are Programmers smarter than Lawyers?

What?

    > What are programmers famous for?
    > Programmers disrupt.

What a load of self-pretentious crap. Programmers program.

Some programmers have the desire to launch businesses that will change the world. For them, programming is one part of a large collection of tools, abilities, and activities. But just one. The author mentions Paul Graham who also talks of the requirement for "schlepping" - a critical part of running a start-up, and nothing to do with programming.

Some programmer will succeed running a business, some will succeed in running a successful business that makes a lot of money. Some may even succeed in disrupting and existing market.

But "Programmers disrupt."

Please, spare me.

The answer depends on how one defines "smarter". If "smarter" means being able to organize things that naturally tend to become disorganized, then yes, programmers are smarter than lawyers.

Programmers thrive by creating local violations of entropy. Lawyers are entropy.

Because of my own myopic, self-interestedness I actually do think some programmers are smarter than most lawyers. But this article is not evidence or argument of that.

Knowledge wise they are on a par, though having said that you can't be a lawyer without knowing x > massive amounts of law, and you can be a programmer (not necessarily a good one) without knowing x amounts about a language, structures, and low level.

The kicker is abstract/mathmatical knowledge/ability. Lawyers require none. To my mind abstract problems require the most 'intelligence' as it were. But again that's personal bias.

How is being disruptive any indication of smartness?

It is the field which enables you to change industry standards, not the people who populate it.

If anyone is well known as being disruptive I would say it was the scientist. Science research has a waaaaay longer and more impactful history of being disruptive to society than anything else in the (recorded) history of mankind. We programmers are a new breed and are still in our infancy. Programming technology is still in its respective dark ages.

>Do lawyers get to disrupt? I think they don't.

I could go on ad nauseam, but compare Jim Crow Laws and Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education.

A more modern example is the fine disruptive work being done at the EFF.

This is a very stupid question! So I guess you are not a programmer :)

peterwiese if you are reading me, you are hel lbanned and all your comments are marked [dead].