3 ms·

This reminds me of "The King's Speech". A competent quack isn't necessarily an oxymoron. As a self-taught programmer that's encouraging.

myself248 1y ago
I don't think he was a quack, he wasn't selling anything counterfactual or deceptive. He was outside the mainstream, but more in the sense of a specialist than a fraudster. And his novel funding model allowed care when none else could be afforded.
- krisoft 1y ago
  > he wasn't selling anything counterfactual or deceptive He was saying he is a physician, and by all evidence he wasn't. That's both deceptive and counterfactual.
  - opwieurposiu 1y ago
    I think 6,500 alive babies is probably a better credential then a diploma on a wall.
    - nkrisc 1y ago
      Doesn’t make it not strictly fraudulent.
      - afthonos 1y ago
        Don’t worry, the world will never lack for Great Bureaucrats to tut-tut 6500 babies irregularly saved, and to regulate away the likelihood of such atrocities happening on the regular.
    - krisoft 1y ago
      That is the “competent” part from the “competent quack”. Obviously if we can believe his numbers, that is.
imzadi 1y ago
It's really amazing how back then people could just come to the US and completely reinvent themselves. William Mulholland was a poor Irish kid with almost no education who became a self-taught engineer and completely reshaped the future of Los Angeles. Stuff like that just can't happen anymore.
- kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago
  > Stuff like that just can't happen anymore. Ya sure about that? You can be a fraudster in the UK, have your medical degree revoked, and go to the US as a fraudster without a medical degree... And be a leader! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
georgeecollins 1y ago
So many of the best programmers I have worked with are self taught! The key is if they keep learning as they go, because self education can skip some theory, and every changes too. Somewhere along the way CS became really popular so you'd get people with nice credentials and zero passion to do the actual work. Let's fight that paper ceiling.
- schwartzworld 1y ago
  I’d go further and say that writing code for a living requires a great deal of self-teaching regardless of your background. CS degrees typically don’t teach you how to build software, and even if they did, the problem space is huge. There is a lifetime of self-teaching to do from the moment you take your first job. I think that my being self-taught helped my career quite a bit. It did make it harder to get in the door, but that was just a one-time problem to solve.
hammock 1y ago
People forget that all doctors were quacks (to borrow your meaning, loosely) until 1847 when the AMA was founded to promote medical licensing; and/or until Flexner’s report to Congress that there were too many unlicensed doctors not using enough pharmaceuticals (1910), the standardization of allopathic medicine and founding of the Federation of State Medical Boards (1912)

myself248 1y ago

I don't think he was a quack, he wasn't selling anything counterfactual or deceptive. He was outside the mainstream, but more in the sense of a specialist than a fraudster. And his novel funding model allowed care when none else could be afforded.

krisoft 1y ago
> he wasn't selling anything counterfactual or deceptive He was saying he is a physician, and by all evidence he wasn't. That's both deceptive and counterfactual.
- opwieurposiu 1y ago
  I think 6,500 alive babies is probably a better credential then a diploma on a wall.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    Doesn’t make it not strictly fraudulent.
    - afthonos 1y ago
      Don’t worry, the world will never lack for Great Bureaucrats to tut-tut 6500 babies irregularly saved, and to regulate away the likelihood of such atrocities happening on the regular.
  - krisoft 1y ago
    That is the “competent” part from the “competent quack”. Obviously if we can believe his numbers, that is.

imzadi 1y ago

It's really amazing how back then people could just come to the US and completely reinvent themselves. William Mulholland was a poor Irish kid with almost no education who became a self-taught engineer and completely reshaped the future of Los Angeles. Stuff like that just can't happen anymore.

kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago
> Stuff like that just can't happen anymore. Ya sure about that? You can be a fraudster in the UK, have your medical degree revoked, and go to the US as a fraudster without a medical degree... And be a leader! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

georgeecollins 1y ago

So many of the best programmers I have worked with are self taught! The key is if they keep learning as they go, because self education can skip some theory, and every changes too. Somewhere along the way CS became really popular so you'd get people with nice credentials and zero passion to do the actual work. Let's fight that paper ceiling.

schwartzworld 1y ago
I’d go further and say that writing code for a living requires a great deal of self-teaching regardless of your background. CS degrees typically don’t teach you how to build software, and even if they did, the problem space is huge. There is a lifetime of self-teaching to do from the moment you take your first job. I think that my being self-taught helped my career quite a bit. It did make it harder to get in the door, but that was just a one-time problem to solve.

hammock 1y ago

People forget that all doctors were quacks (to borrow your meaning, loosely) until 1847 when the AMA was founded to promote medical licensing; and/or until Flexner’s report to Congress that there were too many unlicensed doctors not using enough pharmaceuticals (1910), the standardization of allopathic medicine and founding of the Federation of State Medical Boards (1912)