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Comment by pfisch | Hacker News Reader

"One reason for this, she said, was a function of skills. “Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL,” she said. C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, “Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop,” which are newer versions of those things."

Umm, what?

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It's an acceptable simplification for (presumably) a non-technical audience. Rather than write a paragraph or three about 'what is a SQL and why should I care', then another paragraph or three of 'what is a Hadoop, why should I care, and how it compares to SQL', they just say "it's newer". It's kind of like telling my grandmother "Yes, I work in computers". It saves a good 60+ minutes of glassy-eyed explaining.

The strange thing is that if you just say "newer technologies" it's both a simpler sentence and less obviously wrong. (As someone's pointed out already, it's still wrong because Python's comparatively older.)

I'm not sure this 'tech journalist' knows enough about the field to make any more than a blatantly sensationalist story.

Out of the companies mentioned as having younger workers (Epic Games, Facebook, Zynga, Google, AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com), only two -- Facebook and Google are what most of the younger CS grads from my school would consider worth joining (not even Facebook so much; I know people declined internships at Facebook to do something more exciting).

"The best companies in techlology" (as determined by what, stock value?) aren't exactly the watermark which you judge the entire industry by. There can be a lot of other companies who are recruiting a good mix of older/more experienced, and younger/more eager workers.

I'm not sure if he's implicitly comparing it to the journalism industry in which (presumably) age counts for a lot more.

What's up with adding social media here. That's like saying boomers know how to communicate around water coolers.

Python is almost a decade older than C#!

I'd argue that C# people are the same people that were C++/MFC Windows developers a decade back.

No. Most of the c# people are Java refuges. The c++ people are still using it.

Agreed. I avoid Java whenever possible for C# or Scala. This, after many college courses that required the use of Java and later on projects for clients. C# at least lets one use more modern programming practices than what Java 7 (or below) allows.

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