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I disagree with this sentiment, I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in col
by clay_to_n 10y ago
I disagree with this sentiment, I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good.
(I also think there's a huge spectrum of people between these two "types" of developers)
"Because of this, it's very hard to tell as people get older which camp they came from."
I agree, and I think that's a great thing. Being a hacker at a young age is awesome, and should be encouraged, but there are a lot of people who don't know what they're good at (or love) until later in life. In my experience people newer to the industry (at least on the level of "hacker at 13" vs college or later) often have less ego on them, and are more down to Earth about what they do.
- forgottenpass 10y agoI think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good. If we slightly re-write parent's argument to remove the elitism and focus on the people it's possible to see the same message without the baggage. Focused study can level the groups, but regardless of how people get there, the quality of any graduating class has a roughly bi-modal distribution. One group is the students who kept up in class, knew what they were doing, and learned a lot. It doesn't matter if they had experience going in, or worked hard to make up for lost time. And the other group half-assed it just well enough to make it over the finish line. Or to rephrase again - you had people who wanted (for whatever reason) a skillset that is marketable, and a group that thought they could buy a ticket to a good jobs.