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> Do these hackers no longer exist in the US? Or is everyone a hipster rubyist today? Oh, they exist. It's just the proportion of programmers these days skew h

> Do these hackers no longer exist in the US? Or is everyone a hipster rubyist today? Oh, they exist. It's just the proportion of programmers these days skew heavily toward web devs and "hipster rubyists" than it used to. There are still a lot of low-level guys and people with experience with these waterfall models. However, as "self driving cars" become the rage with a lot of the public, more hipster rubyist types will want to jump ship to this rage from their last and will apply expecting the same culture to prevail.

laichzeit0 10y ago
I'm afraid the "hipster rubyists" have little to contribute towards the self driving cars field. You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. That's why there's a shortage. I don't think these auto-makers are talking about the type of skills you can pick up in a few weekends of watching Code School videos or trying to teach yourself machine learning without a formal education in mathematics/statistics. This is not easy stuff.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Give me a stack of textbooks, a list of open problems to study, and a six month supply of caffeine.
  - crpatino 10y ago
    Sure. Do you want a divorce with that?
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    That's the spirit!
- santaclaus 10y ago
  > You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. The most highly cited CS researcher that I've worked with has an undergraduate degree in music and no graduate level formal training... smarts, focus, and a keen eye can get one pretty far.
  - derivagral 10y ago
    Part of the focus on degree is similar to a business adage: "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM." In a similar way, if something goes wrong or doesn't pan out over the longer cycles, "Nobody gets fired for hiring a PHD."
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. That's why there's a shortage. That's part of why there is a shortage. The other part is that the companies in the industry either have standards that are too high (must have years of recent experience in their particular laundry list) or don't know what they are actually looking for. I have the degree, I have years of real-time sensor experience, but nobody will talk to me because I have been doing NLP for the past four years.
- white-flame 10y ago
  Overall, degrees don't mean anything to this sort of education anymore, especially in computing. Everybody in industry bemoans that people are graduating without skills, knowledge, or formal thought processes. Universities have dropped the ball in the last few decades as they've been turned to profit centers, taking advantage of an increasingly externally funded captive audience who requires degrees. But while employers have some realization of this situation, they're still stuck on degrees being meaningful. I agree these skills aren't easy stuff, and the best place to pick it up is university. But going through university doesn't mean someone actually gained these skills. And being without a degree doesn't mean someone is without the skills. It's become orthogonal.
  - laichzeit0 10y ago
    I wanted to also comment to the guy that mentioned the music degree'd CS below with the same thing: In the article they specifically bemoan the fact that people no longer want to work on projects for "years". A degree (even more so a masters or PhD) basically says to an employer "this person has the type of personality that can work at something for years" which is exactly what they want. Even better if he's already skilled in the field you need skills for.
lacampbell 10y ago
I think the whole thing with webdev is that the barrier to entry for starting your own little company or SaaS or even being a contractor is much lower. Not many bootstrapped embedded programming startups - if you're doing low level stuff you seem to always be working for medium to large companies.
- noobermin 10y ago
  So I don't do work with low-level stuff (computational physicist here, so different low-level), but I was of the impression things like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi and all these open source maker tools have significantly lowered the barrier too, if not at least the overhead.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    Are people making enough money to quit their day jobs doing stuff for the Arduino and Raspberry? My impression was that it's all hobbyist. If there are, please someone let me know.
    - di4na 10y ago
      There is a market for stuff like that that integrate into tools, especially for factories. But it needs more integration and investment, and it needs to be able to sale to big entreprisey world, where you compete with IBM, Cisco and co. But there is definitely something to do to instrument factories and lines.
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    It's definitely easier to get into embedded programming. But blinking a light, or monitoring the air pressure around you isn't going to pay the bills as easily. Compare that to making a simple web application or extension, and signing up for adwords. Almost all programming is easier now than when I was growing up (regardless of area), but that doesn't mean that those areas have all had the same level of growth in terms of actual proficient programmers. ex: Compare the ease of creating the site at the top of the google search for "subnet calculator", and how much it makes in ad driven traffic vs what you would have to do to monetize even the simplest embedded project.

laichzeit0 10y ago

I'm afraid the "hipster rubyists" have little to contribute towards the self driving cars field. You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. That's why there's a shortage. I don't think these auto-makers are talking about the type of skills you can pick up in a few weekends of watching Code School videos or trying to teach yourself machine learning without a formal education in mathematics/statistics. This is not easy stuff.

nitrogen 10y ago
Give me a stack of textbooks, a list of open problems to study, and a six month supply of caffeine.
- crpatino 10y ago
  Sure. Do you want a divorce with that?
- jjawssd 10y ago
  That's the spirit!
santaclaus 10y ago
> You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. The most highly cited CS researcher that I've worked with has an undergraduate degree in music and no graduate level formal training... smarts, focus, and a keen eye can get one pretty far.
- derivagral 10y ago
  Part of the focus on degree is similar to a business adage: "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM." In a similar way, if something goes wrong or doesn't pan out over the longer cycles, "Nobody gets fired for hiring a PHD."
vonmoltke 10y ago
> You need an actual degree, if not a masters or doctorate to play. That's why there's a shortage. That's part of why there is a shortage. The other part is that the companies in the industry either have standards that are too high (must have years of recent experience in their particular laundry list) or don't know what they are actually looking for. I have the degree, I have years of real-time sensor experience, but nobody will talk to me because I have been doing NLP for the past four years.
white-flame 10y ago
Overall, degrees don't mean anything to this sort of education anymore, especially in computing. Everybody in industry bemoans that people are graduating without skills, knowledge, or formal thought processes. Universities have dropped the ball in the last few decades as they've been turned to profit centers, taking advantage of an increasingly externally funded captive audience who requires degrees. But while employers have some realization of this situation, they're still stuck on degrees being meaningful. I agree these skills aren't easy stuff, and the best place to pick it up is university. But going through university doesn't mean someone actually gained these skills. And being without a degree doesn't mean someone is without the skills. It's become orthogonal.
- laichzeit0 10y ago
  I wanted to also comment to the guy that mentioned the music degree'd CS below with the same thing: In the article they specifically bemoan the fact that people no longer want to work on projects for "years". A degree (even more so a masters or PhD) basically says to an employer "this person has the type of personality that can work at something for years" which is exactly what they want. Even better if he's already skilled in the field you need skills for.

lacampbell 10y ago

I think the whole thing with webdev is that the barrier to entry for starting your own little company or SaaS or even being a contractor is much lower. Not many bootstrapped embedded programming startups - if you're doing low level stuff you seem to always be working for medium to large companies.

noobermin 10y ago
So I don't do work with low-level stuff (computational physicist here, so different low-level), but I was of the impression things like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi and all these open source maker tools have significantly lowered the barrier too, if not at least the overhead.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Are people making enough money to quit their day jobs doing stuff for the Arduino and Raspberry? My impression was that it's all hobbyist. If there are, please someone let me know.
  - di4na 10y ago
    There is a market for stuff like that that integrate into tools, especially for factories. But it needs more integration and investment, and it needs to be able to sale to big entreprisey world, where you compete with IBM, Cisco and co. But there is definitely something to do to instrument factories and lines.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  It's definitely easier to get into embedded programming. But blinking a light, or monitoring the air pressure around you isn't going to pay the bills as easily. Compare that to making a simple web application or extension, and signing up for adwords. Almost all programming is easier now than when I was growing up (regardless of area), but that doesn't mean that those areas have all had the same level of growth in terms of actual proficient programmers. ex: Compare the ease of creating the site at the top of the google search for "subnet calculator", and how much it makes in ad driven traffic vs what you would have to do to monetize even the simplest embedded project.