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If everyone believed what you are saying then nothing would get built. It's easy to think creating/inventing things was so much easier back then. Think of how f

by apsurd 15y ago

If everyone believed what you are saying then nothing would get built. It's easy to think creating/inventing things was so much easier back then. Think of how famous I could be if I lived hundreds of years ago. I could easily invent the light bulb, radio, motors, computers. Hell kids today are building these things right! The concepts are so simple, everything was up for grabs back then! Only they weren't. As vain as we want to be the truth is we haven't reached any kind of technological limit. Creating stuff is as hard as it always was. Hard. The facebook thing is a bad one. It's been mentioned time and time again that Zuck could have said the same about myspace... Github also a bad one. They are a TINY. Github is awesome, I love them, but they are TINY. I think ruby and javascript are the most popular languages on github. Yet php is the most popular language on the internet. Point being, github is tiny, HN is tiny, Rails is tiny. Feel good about all the opportunities that exist out there! edited to add: For some motivation, here's what a solo modern inventor can do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen

latch 15y ago
Do you really believe that for all fields? Or just for software development? I have to absolutely totally disagree with you if you are talking about all fields. Licensing, regulatory and insurance costs alone prove a significant barrier to entry. I also think that as a field matures, so too does the body of knowledge and the amount of time required to become an expert in said field increases. Look at how much more a doctor, lawyer, or account needs to know today than they did 100 years ago. I also think this is unavoidable in software..though I might agree with you that we aren't there yet? However, whenever I hear someone say "Well, X didn't have those features either when they shipped", I always cringe)

by apsurd 15y ago

latch 15y ago

Do you really believe that for all fields? Or just for software development? I have to absolutely totally disagree with you if you are talking about all fields. Licensing, regulatory and insurance costs alone prove a significant barrier to entry. I also think that as a field matures, so too does the body of knowledge and the amount of time required to become an expert in said field increases. Look at how much more a doctor, lawyer, or account needs to know today than they did 100 years ago. I also think this is unavoidable in software..though I might agree with you that we aren't there yet? However, whenever I hear someone say "Well, X didn't have those features either when they shipped", I always cringe)