Hacker News Reader

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code? Steve Jobs couldn't code at all. Facebook was written in PHP. GroupOn started on WordPress. According to this Slashdot article, Sergey and Larry aren't great programmers.

http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/11/01/1324209/larry-p...

The Instagram founders didn't have a programming background:

http://thenextweb.com/2012/04/10/instagrams-ceo-had-no-forma...

My take away is that beyond getting the job done, joining the priesthood of programmers is pretty low on what's important.

If you want to be successful, focus on the other things then hire a bunch of programmers to continue your dream once you hit it big. By the way, make sure the interviews are insanely difficult and keep your geeks out of the weeds (e.g. HN). Geeks love to play in the weeds!

View on HN

> What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code?

Are we on the same site? I've been reading HN since it was called Startup News, and I have never felt such a disconnect before.

> The Instagram founders didn't have a programming background

Instagram could be worth a trillion dollars and I wouldn't give a shit about it. Show me the code. Satisfy me intellectually. Not everything is about money, and that is part of the reason I call myself a hacker--coding for the sake of coding and what not.

Beats me. I guess someday when you're an old man, right before you close your eyes for the last time, you can imagine all that cool code that you wrote, and say what a great life you had. You were a hacker.

Steve, Larry, Notch, and the Instagram guys can know what they did made a difference. The world is a different place because they lived. They connected the important dots and hacked life...

> I guess someday when you're an old man, right before you close your eyes for the last time, you can imagine all that cool code that you wrote, and say what a great life you had. You were a hacker.

I'm also a researcher, and I like to think that the ideas I discover will outlast me and will make a difference.

Your implication is that those who think of software as a 'product' to be sold are making a difference, and those who think of creating software as its own reward are not. Maybe you are right. I just wish there was a place for those of us who appreciate the craft to hang out. Hacker News, for a long time, was that place for me.

>> I just wish there was a place for those of us who appreciate the craft to hang out. Hacker News, for a long time, was that place for me.

I still don't get what you're talking about, you like to look at and admire code like it's art? Can you give an example of code that gives you satisfaction to just look at it regardless what it does?

Since we're talking about Carmack in this thread.... Fabien Sanglard does some excellent reviews of code from ID... see for example:

http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/

There's actually a movement that studies code in the way you'd examine a literary work (Critical Code Studies). Sure it's very abstract, but it can be fun, see for example this book:

http://10print.org/

You could also look at livecoding - they treat coding as a performance art. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSGKEy8vHqg

This: http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/i... is a perfect example of what you're asking for (for me of course).

Have you read Stephen Levy's Hackers? I'm not sure Instagram would even exist without the pioneering programmers who started out on model trains...

Yes, we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Can we be done now? This really is a waste of time.

There are lots of ways to live a great life and relatively few of them involve fame and fortune.

Also there are many people who make a big difference without achieving fame and fortune. Even within the tech industry I would argue that, for example, Dennis Ritchie's contributions were far more fundamentally important than any of the people you listed, yet he never achieved the massive wealth or mainstream fame of those you've mentioned.

I didn't say that you had to achieve massive wealth or fame. I said being that "idolizing someone for writing great code" isn't a worthwhile goal. Dennis Ritchie created two important products that are still used today: C and Unix. I think you'd find plenty of people would have a lot of bad things to say about C, for example, but it did solve a problem and help move the world forward.

By the way, why wouldn't you mention Bertrand Meyer or Niklaus Wirth?

It's not about money, it's about providing value. Beautiful code that solves the wrong problem is just broken, because it doesn't do what it sets out to do. I don't see much beauty in code that's broken like that.

"For every complex problem there's an answer that's clear, simple, and wrong."

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I think you are saying something different than the person I replied to.

To me, the statement "What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code?" suggests that programming is not an art, not worthy of further consideration, a mere means to an end to whatever product to be sold. To me, that statement is like saying "Who even idolizes <insert great painter here>? The guys who sold this art didn't even know how to paint!"

I am not saying that is an invalid viewpoint. I just think it's a weird viewpoint to have on Hacker News. For me, mathematics, code, etc is not a means to an end, but its own reward. To me, that is part of what it means to be a hacker. I wish there was a place where everyone felt the same way. Hacker News used to be that place for me, but the demographic has changed a lot. That is sad.

I've been here over 4 years. And I certainly appreciate good coders, and there are times when they do make a difference. e.g. Bill Atkinson...

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_O...

However, what was really important is that Bill helped to make the Macintosh great. However, I don't think people will be studying his 68000 assembler in the future like a great math formula or a great painting. We are talking about him because of the results of his work.

Hmm, you're probably right that the other poster meant his disparaging remark about code quality literally. I also enjoy writing great code for the sake of it (artisanship), but from a business perspective bad, insecure, unreliable code typically won't hold you back much. Treating your employees badly is often good for business too. I'd much rather live in a world where great products win and doing the right thing matters, but we don't.

I also agree that the tone of the community has shifted a lot in the past years. Still, given how much HN has grown the community has survived surprisingly well. It's a bit meaner and nit-pickier than it used to be, though.

Contrary to what that article is saying, the Instagram founders did have a programming background. I was at a talk given by Kevin Systrom - he said something about having gotten a B in a programming class at Stanford, so he had at least an intro-level knowledge of coding (which is honestly a better start than something like Codecademy).

Mike Krieger got a degree in Symbolic Systems, which requires quite a few CS courses.

Personally I couldn't care less about a bunch of ceos or company managers, as a programmer I look up to people like dennis ritchie, linus torvalds, bjarne stroustrup, rob pike, brian kernighan.. etc etc

> The Instagram founders didn't have a programming background

If you spend your evenings learning to program, as the article claims, how do you not have a programming background? John Carmack, who is considered a programming god by many, which can even be seen in this very discussion, also has very little formal training. I don't think that means he doesn't have a programming background.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com