22 ms·

Arguably his A64/x86-64 work has been more impactful (so far). Imagine a young Jim Keller from Penn State University, makes you wonder how many SV firms today

by kirse 9y ago

Arguably his A64/x86-64 work has been more impactful (so far). Imagine a young Jim Keller from Penn State University, makes you wonder how many SV firms today would toss out that resume in favor of a less... generic... institution. Even worse, he works for DEC, which is a boring big company. This guy is like vomit in the mouth of startup culture.

deepnotderp 9y ago
To be fair, the DEC Alpha team was highly respected in the CPU architecture industry.
pkaye 9y ago
That is because the average startup culture thinks everything other than web/mobile is not interesting. All the system architecture guides I see these days consist of load balancers, webservers and databases as if that is all that matters.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  Startup culture you describe is more entrepreneurship than high-tech. Business idea and execution makes the difference, not several years of technological edge over competition. Biotech, medicine, electronics, wireless technology, signal processing, chemistry and material science startups work in different environment. Get good education (PhD is requirement in many areas), work in a firm or research group until you are at top of the game and have learned all practical skills, then start a business.
- tmccrmck 9y ago
  You can see it in the Rust community. So much of the focus has been on http servers instead of codecs, operating systems, daemons, file systems, etc.
  - vvanders 9y ago
    That seems pretty uncharitable, there's more than a few OS projects happening in the Rust space and I know a bunch of people spend time poking at low-level stuff(myself included).
    - cbHXBY1D 9y ago
      The above poster didn't say that there weren't any OSs or low-level stuff (anyone who frequents HN would know that) they said that majority focus is elsewhere.
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    To be fair, in a sense it's less surprising when the most notable project in Rust, from relatively early on, was a web browser.
  - kjs3 9y ago
    There needs to be some variant of 'Goodwins Law' where in any HN thread, the probability of someone inserting Rust in the conversation, no matter how irrelevant, approaches 1.
davemp 9y ago
It's a shame how going through the hassle and politics of getting PhD (from a reputable school) is now almost a requirement for the cutting edge. Getting a PhD is honestly such a bad deal financially and socially. I'm sure the prospect of sinking ~5yrs into some laser focused sub-field for garbage pay scares away a lot of potential--not including academia's useless bureaucracy cough GRE.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > It's a shame how going through the hassle and politics of getting PhD (from a reputable school) is now almost a requirement for the cutting edge. Nowadays, a PhD is literally dedicated to carry out original research, which normally entails a curricular part that serves to help a candidate get up to date on the state of the art. Conducting original research is a natural requirement to be on the cutting edge of any scientific or technical field.
  - davemp 9y ago
    > a PhD is literally dedicated to carry out original research *for ~$30k/yr for five years > Conducting original research is a natural requirement to be on the cutting edge of any scientific or technical field. I'm not saying that a PhD won't prepare you. Just that it's inefficient in terms of stress/time/money.
    - geezerjay 9y ago
      > *for ~$30k/yr for five years Perhaps that's a US thing. In most european countries (if not all), not only are the costs significantly lower but each state sets up research programs where PhD candidates are actually paid to pursue their studies. Those PhD positions are limited and in some places the pay tends to be somewhat low, but still PhD candidates do get paid for their work. There are also programs where private companies can participate in PhD programs as part of their R&D investment, and enable their employees to pursuit PhDs while working for them.
      - 9y ago

by kirse 9y ago

deepnotderp 9y ago

To be fair, the DEC Alpha team was highly respected in the CPU architecture industry.

pkaye 9y ago

That is because the average startup culture thinks everything other than web/mobile is not interesting. All the system architecture guides I see these days consist of load balancers, webservers and databases as if that is all that matters.

Nokinside 9y ago
Startup culture you describe is more entrepreneurship than high-tech. Business idea and execution makes the difference, not several years of technological edge over competition. Biotech, medicine, electronics, wireless technology, signal processing, chemistry and material science startups work in different environment. Get good education (PhD is requirement in many areas), work in a firm or research group until you are at top of the game and have learned all practical skills, then start a business.
tmccrmck 9y ago
You can see it in the Rust community. So much of the focus has been on http servers instead of codecs, operating systems, daemons, file systems, etc.
- vvanders 9y ago
  That seems pretty uncharitable, there's more than a few OS projects happening in the Rust space and I know a bunch of people spend time poking at low-level stuff(myself included).
  - cbHXBY1D 9y ago
    The above poster didn't say that there weren't any OSs or low-level stuff (anyone who frequents HN would know that) they said that majority focus is elsewhere.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  To be fair, in a sense it's less surprising when the most notable project in Rust, from relatively early on, was a web browser.
- kjs3 9y ago
  There needs to be some variant of 'Goodwins Law' where in any HN thread, the probability of someone inserting Rust in the conversation, no matter how irrelevant, approaches 1.

davemp 9y ago

It's a shame how going through the hassle and politics of getting PhD (from a reputable school) is now almost a requirement for the cutting edge. Getting a PhD is honestly such a bad deal financially and socially. I'm sure the prospect of sinking ~5yrs into some laser focused sub-field for garbage pay scares away a lot of potential--not including academia's useless bureaucracy cough GRE.

geezerjay 9y ago
> It's a shame how going through the hassle and politics of getting PhD (from a reputable school) is now almost a requirement for the cutting edge. Nowadays, a PhD is literally dedicated to carry out original research, which normally entails a curricular part that serves to help a candidate get up to date on the state of the art. Conducting original research is a natural requirement to be on the cutting edge of any scientific or technical field.
- davemp 9y ago
  > a PhD is literally dedicated to carry out original research *for ~$30k/yr for five years > Conducting original research is a natural requirement to be on the cutting edge of any scientific or technical field. I'm not saying that a PhD won't prepare you. Just that it's inefficient in terms of stress/time/money.
  - geezerjay 9y ago
    > *for ~$30k/yr for five years Perhaps that's a US thing. In most european countries (if not all), not only are the costs significantly lower but each state sets up research programs where PhD candidates are actually paid to pursue their studies. Those PhD positions are limited and in some places the pay tends to be somewhat low, but still PhD candidates do get paid for their work. There are also programs where private companies can participate in PhD programs as part of their R&D investment, and enable their employees to pursuit PhDs while working for them.
    - 9y ago