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Why is this comment getting upvoted? It's pretty insulting and arrogant to paint a massive swathe of our community as stupid, unambitious people who never progr

Why is this comment getting upvoted? It's pretty insulting and arrogant to paint a massive swathe of our community as stupid, unambitious people who never progressed past hello world. Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. The last person I met who described themselves as a COBOL programmer was about 10 years ago, and even they said they did it for the money as there were so few of them left. So the programmers edw519's knows have in all probability probably managed to switch from COBOL to to VB6, then Java or PHP and then maybe even C# or Ruby and are probably nowhere near as stagnant or unambitious as he's portraying them. It's that or he hangs round at COBOL programmer's meetups.

FD3SA 12y ago
I felt the same, but I've come to realize that the comment you take issue with perfectly encapsulates the tech industry. A no holds barred race to the bottom. That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. Something about programmers makes them think they are all the destined one true hero, and as a result, programmers tend to disparage and disrespect their own peers, at great cost to themselves. My favorite is this guy [1], who was literally adding billions of dollars of revenue for Goldman Sachs, but was getting paid peanuts. When he left to pursue more interesting work (not for salary!), they brought the FBI down on him. I don't call myself a programmer, computer scientist, or any such low class term anymore. I'm a consultant, and I don't associate with self-deprecating professionals who denigrate their own fields. Humans are primates, and we form status hierarchies. Proudly exclaiming that your tribe is at the very bottom is the definition of stupidity. Good luck to those that do, I sincerely wish you the best. But when your salary stagnates, you're asked to work 80hr weeks without overtime, and you get no respect from management, maybe its time for a little self-reflection. There is a reason software dev is such a low status profession, and it's not because we're "nerds". It's because we self-denigrate and self-deprecate like no other profession on earth. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov EDIT: It is worth reading this article if you'd like some more details on this problem, from a fellow HN member who has dedicated a lot of time to thinking about it [2]. 2. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other-half-works-an-adventure-in-the-low-status-of-software-engineers/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...
- khyryk 12y ago
  > That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. As a combination or individually? Medicine is about the only one in the list that's strong in all of the listed characteristics. "Heavy engineering", to my knowledge, doesn't pay much more, finance doesn't seem that much more stable, and law certainly has good work conditions for those at the very top, but not for the newbies.
- simplemath 12y ago
  How did you get "other programmers" as the villain in Aleynikov's disgusting tale? Just wondering.
  - FD3SA 12y ago
    Actually in his case, his worst enemy was himself. He did not accurately value himself within the organization either politically or economically [1]. He thus paid the price. The programmer types were different from the trader types. The trader types were far more alive to the bigger picture, to their context. They knew their worth in the marketplace down to the last penny. They understood the connection between what they did and how much money was made , and they were good at exaggerating the importance of the link. Serge wasn’t like that. He was a little-picture person, a narrow problem solver. “I think he didn’t know his own value,” says the recruiter. [2] 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7577872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7577872 2. http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- auntienomen 12y ago
  You should take with a grain of salt any assertions you see that Aleynikov was bringing in billions in revenue. The sub-industry he worked in doesn't see those kinds of numbers from any individual's effort.
unoti 12y ago
> Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. That's true, but it's a hockey stick / logarithmic thing. When I started coding, the BASIC and COBOL technologies were waning-- still bringing in paychecks, but it was clear that their peak was a few years in the past. There are lots of people right here on these forums using technologies today that are in the exact same situation. Citing these examples by name usually erupts into a flame war, but for sake of illustration, a good example might be PHP.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  PHP's not there, no-one's been able to replace its ease of use and it will remain until someone does. Also it's had some good face lifts recently. There's plenty of new code being written today in PHP. Perl, on the other hand, is.
kyllo 12y ago
Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. The last person I met who described themselves as a COBOL programmer was about 10 years ago, and even they said they did it for the money as there were so few of them left. They haven't really diminished to almost nothing, they have just been outsourced to Indian shops. You'll have a really hard time finding Westerners who still write those languages, but Indian firms are happy to step in and fill that void, maintaining the hundreds of millions of lines of COBOL code still in production at Fortune 500 companies, on a contract basis.

FD3SA 12y ago

I felt the same, but I've come to realize that the comment you take issue with perfectly encapsulates the tech industry. A no holds barred race to the bottom. That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. Something about programmers makes them think they are all the destined one true hero, and as a result, programmers tend to disparage and disrespect their own peers, at great cost to themselves. My favorite is this guy [1], who was literally adding billions of dollars of revenue for Goldman Sachs, but was getting paid peanuts. When he left to pursue more interesting work (not for salary!), they brought the FBI down on him. I don't call myself a programmer, computer scientist, or any such low class term anymore. I'm a consultant, and I don't associate with self-deprecating professionals who denigrate their own fields. Humans are primates, and we form status hierarchies. Proudly exclaiming that your tribe is at the very bottom is the definition of stupidity. Good luck to those that do, I sincerely wish you the best. But when your salary stagnates, you're asked to work 80hr weeks without overtime, and you get no respect from management, maybe its time for a little self-reflection. There is a reason software dev is such a low status profession, and it's not because we're "nerds". It's because we self-denigrate and self-deprecate like no other profession on earth. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov EDIT: It is worth reading this article if you'd like some more details on this problem, from a fellow HN member who has dedicated a lot of time to thinking about it [2]. 2. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other-half-works-an-adventure-in-the-low-status-of-software-engineers/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...

khyryk 12y ago
> That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. As a combination or individually? Medicine is about the only one in the list that's strong in all of the listed characteristics. "Heavy engineering", to my knowledge, doesn't pay much more, finance doesn't seem that much more stable, and law certainly has good work conditions for those at the very top, but not for the newbies.
simplemath 12y ago
How did you get "other programmers" as the villain in Aleynikov's disgusting tale? Just wondering.
- FD3SA 12y ago
  Actually in his case, his worst enemy was himself. He did not accurately value himself within the organization either politically or economically [1]. He thus paid the price. The programmer types were different from the trader types. The trader types were far more alive to the bigger picture, to their context. They knew their worth in the marketplace down to the last penny. They understood the connection between what they did and how much money was made , and they were good at exaggerating the importance of the link. Serge wasn’t like that. He was a little-picture person, a narrow problem solver. “I think he didn’t know his own value,” says the recruiter. [2] 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7577872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7577872 2. http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
auntienomen 12y ago
You should take with a grain of salt any assertions you see that Aleynikov was bringing in billions in revenue. The sub-industry he worked in doesn't see those kinds of numbers from any individual's effort.

unoti 12y ago

> Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. That's true, but it's a hockey stick / logarithmic thing. When I started coding, the BASIC and COBOL technologies were waning-- still bringing in paychecks, but it was clear that their peak was a few years in the past. There are lots of people right here on these forums using technologies today that are in the exact same situation. Citing these examples by name usually erupts into a flame war, but for sake of illustration, a good example might be PHP.

mattmanser 12y ago
PHP's not there, no-one's been able to replace its ease of use and it will remain until someone does. Also it's had some good face lifts recently. There's plenty of new code being written today in PHP. Perl, on the other hand, is.

kyllo 12y ago

Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. The last person I met who described themselves as a COBOL programmer was about 10 years ago, and even they said they did it for the money as there were so few of them left. They haven't really diminished to almost nothing, they have just been outsourced to Indian shops. You'll have a really hard time finding Westerners who still write those languages, but Indian firms are happy to step in and fill that void, maintaining the hundreds of millions of lines of COBOL code still in production at Fortune 500 companies, on a contract basis.