5 ms·

I know you're making a parody, but I think I agree with your parody. I mean, essentially all you're saying is "startup success is largely uncorrelated with the

I know you're making a parody, but I think I agree with your parody. I mean, essentially all you're saying is "startup success is largely uncorrelated with the programming language used to implement those startups' products". That seems like not at all an unreasonable position. (It's not, by the way, equivalent to the statement "choice of language doesn't matter".)

chiefalchemist 10y ago
Luck. Timing. Culture. Team. Etc. All have a greater impact than language. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand history.
- edoceo 10y ago
  Traction and Team. Luck is not a factor.
  - chii 10y ago
    why is luck not a factor? I'd imagine it's the biggest factor that you can't control!
    - collyw 10y ago
      I completely agree with this. There were a host of similar services when Facebook appeared in my radar, I was signed up to a couple of them. Its only because more friends signed up for facebook that it seemed to have a snowballing effect. It didn't seem in any way superior (well except compared to myspace).
      - Gruselbauer 10y ago
        In Germany, we used to have a VK-like social network aimed exclusively at university students that was big before Facebook even appeared. To this day I have no idea how that died so fast and hard, and how Facebook managed to overtake it when it hadn't even translated the interface. Ze English izn't zecond nature to all ze Germans.
        guitarbill 10y ago
        Ah yes, the * VZs. From my perspective, there's a few reasons. One, my friends were very privacy conscious and would often either not sign up or use a weird name (like some people do). This made it hard to find people. Two, the user experience sucked hard. Third, they had different domains for different subgroups (I remember one for school children and one for students). Finally, if you went travelling to any other country (except Austria or Switzerland maybe), the rest of the world had Facebook. So to keep in touch, you also needed Facebook, which had a better user experience. Why bother with both?
        apotheon 10y ago
        It's a testament to the poor state of the art in user experience for early social networking sites that Facebook had a (relatively) "good" user experience. It has always been horrible, except relative to most of its competitors.
        edoceo 10y ago
        So, not luck. Despite all the down votes
- 4ndrewl 10y ago
  This needs to be said more.
- dyjakan 10y ago
  Culture is correlated with technology, i.e. certain technologies appeal to certain kinds of people. You can go to any Ruby meetup and you will see it's different than PHP meetup which both are quite different from Functional Programming meetups. Thus I would say that it's not about the technology but about people whom you attract (i.e. culture). I skip luck & timing, these are mostly random and one has very little power to influence them.
  - spronkey 10y ago
    All three of the above communities (PHP, Ruby, and FnProg) are diverse enough that a PHP meetup in location A could be culturally similar to an FnProg meetup in location B, and so on.
  - vancouverwill 10y ago
    you could definitely argue that a company using PHP nowadays would find it harder to find good engineers because the best ones who care about quality, performance etc don't want to work on a PHP app
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Ooh. Mind, I agree with you, but given the Holy Documents Handed Down By Our Lord and Savior, Paul Graham, HN... might not be the safest place to say it. Edit: so, I'm clearly getting a lot of downs on this... maybe sarcasm in reference to PG was going a bit too far. Oh well. I'm not deleting or editing any of it, because that's sort of dishonest.
- jamez1 10y ago
  Sarcasm in general pisses people off, doubt it's anything Paul graham specific
  - eyelidlessness 10y ago
    Sarcasm pisses people off, or delights them. Or both.

chiefalchemist 10y ago

Luck. Timing. Culture. Team. Etc. All have a greater impact than language. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand history.

edoceo 10y ago
Traction and Team. Luck is not a factor.
- chii 10y ago
  why is luck not a factor? I'd imagine it's the biggest factor that you can't control!
  - collyw 10y ago
    I completely agree with this. There were a host of similar services when Facebook appeared in my radar, I was signed up to a couple of them. Its only because more friends signed up for facebook that it seemed to have a snowballing effect. It didn't seem in any way superior (well except compared to myspace).
    - Gruselbauer 10y ago
      In Germany, we used to have a VK-like social network aimed exclusively at university students that was big before Facebook even appeared. To this day I have no idea how that died so fast and hard, and how Facebook managed to overtake it when it hadn't even translated the interface. Ze English izn't zecond nature to all ze Germans.
      - guitarbill 10y ago
        Ah yes, the * VZs. From my perspective, there's a few reasons. One, my friends were very privacy conscious and would often either not sign up or use a weird name (like some people do). This made it hard to find people. Two, the user experience sucked hard. Third, they had different domains for different subgroups (I remember one for school children and one for students). Finally, if you went travelling to any other country (except Austria or Switzerland maybe), the rest of the world had Facebook. So to keep in touch, you also needed Facebook, which had a better user experience. Why bother with both?
        apotheon 10y ago
        It's a testament to the poor state of the art in user experience for early social networking sites that Facebook had a (relatively) "good" user experience. It has always been horrible, except relative to most of its competitors.
        edoceo 10y ago
        So, not luck. Despite all the down votes
4ndrewl 10y ago
This needs to be said more.
dyjakan 10y ago
Culture is correlated with technology, i.e. certain technologies appeal to certain kinds of people. You can go to any Ruby meetup and you will see it's different than PHP meetup which both are quite different from Functional Programming meetups. Thus I would say that it's not about the technology but about people whom you attract (i.e. culture). I skip luck & timing, these are mostly random and one has very little power to influence them.
- spronkey 10y ago
  All three of the above communities (PHP, Ruby, and FnProg) are diverse enough that a PHP meetup in location A could be culturally similar to an FnProg meetup in location B, and so on.
- vancouverwill 10y ago
  you could definitely argue that a company using PHP nowadays would find it harder to find good engineers because the best ones who care about quality, performance etc don't want to work on a PHP app

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Ooh. Mind, I agree with you, but given the Holy Documents Handed Down By Our Lord and Savior, Paul Graham, HN... might not be the safest place to say it. Edit: so, I'm clearly getting a lot of downs on this... maybe sarcasm in reference to PG was going a bit too far. Oh well. I'm not deleting or editing any of it, because that's sort of dishonest.

jamez1 10y ago
Sarcasm in general pisses people off, doubt it's anything Paul graham specific
- eyelidlessness 10y ago
  Sarcasm pisses people off, or delights them. Or both.