3 ms·

Well, there's probably a few things going on. One is that, without much fail, I seem to be able to pick the winners of the next horse race in technology. I don

Well, there's probably a few things going on. One is that, without much fail, I seem to be able to pick the winners of the next horse race in technology. I don't know if it's some kind of sensation of some kind of powerful embryological energy of tech ideas or what, but I sometimes see that things might go in a certain way, and I am usually correct. :) (Ruby I spotted REALLY early. When Rails came out I knew it was gonna happen. Apple did have me worried for a while before the iOS devices, but pulled through.) It's definitely a certain intangible energy, I can say that. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, I am involved with startups (and now despise working at large companies), and am semi-successful there. I think that there's a type of developer who is an "introducer" of new ideas/concepts/products/things and I might be one. I know I enjoy mentoring, too, and I'm told I'm good at it. If I had to write a new garbage-collection algorithm, I would probably suck at that. So there's basically room for everyone, the algorithmists, the language hipsters, and everyone else. ;) Everyone nontechnical who knows me thinks I'm "The Machine Whisperer." When I'm around, things "just work", and I can fix most things pretty quickly. One of my earliest memories is taking things apart to see how they worked... I was fascinated by electric motors... Magician in training. ;) I remember diagramming a regenerative braking system in AP Physics class out of boredom (the school's physics lab ended up getting named after me, for being the first person in the history of the school to get both a 5 on the AP test and 100 on the Regents). Now I drive a Tesla. ;) But first, I had to flunk engineering calculus in college to realize I wasn't bound to be a physicist. THAT was a reality check. I remember walking past that physics lab when I was only in 8th grade or so, and getting a weird feeling... Same as when I tried the first Macintosh, the first iPhone, and wrote my first Ruby code... when I dialed out with a modem for the first time, before the Internet... and when I tried NCSA Mosaic. Anyway, I still get that weird feeling now sometimes. Elixir did it. ;) You might enjoy Beautiful Code if you haven't checked it out yet: http://smile.amazon.com/Beautiful-Code-Leading-Programmers-Practice/dp/0596510047?sa-no-redirect=1 http://smile.amazon.com/Beautiful-Code-Leading-Programmers-P...

pron 11y ago
> So there's basically room for everyone, the algorithmists, the language hipsters, and everyone else. ;) Oh, absolutely. But I'd keep language hipsters away from important software (although any language built on a solid foundation like BEAM or the JVM is a much safer bet than one that isn't). :) > I seem to be able to pick the winners of the next horse race in technology... Ruby Wait, you consider Ruby a winning horse? I hear it's a fun language -- probably a great one -- but it's already beginning to fade after hardly having left a mark on anything but web apps (a very small portion of the software industry, and the least technological). If we coldly consider results I think it hardly qualifies as more than a relatively extended fad. It's not even nearly as popular as Delphi was in its heyday, let alone top-ten languages like Java, C, C++, C#, PHP, VB and JavaScript. In fact, I think that of all languages that could be considered Ruby competitors, Ruby has done the worst (it never threatened PHP's dominance in its field and was easily overtaken by Python -- which has been used in many more domains). Fads are often self-fulfilling prophecies, often gaining brief popularity on sheer novelty alone; but important codebases last for decades. And don't mistake the tiny Silicon Valley software startup scene for a representative of the software industry. Most software developers in the world have never even heard of HN.
- subsection1h 11y ago
  > Wait, you consider Ruby a winning horse? I hear it's a fun language -- probably a great one -- but it's already beginning to fade [...] it never threatened PHP's dominance If a winning horse is one that earns the rider more money (while also being more fun to ride!), then for me and all the Ruby devs I know, Ruby is a winning horse compared to PHP. > important codebases last for decades. Yes, and the author did well to avoid naming their article "Elixir - The next big language for important codebases that will last for decades". :-)
  - pron 11y ago
    > ... then for me and all the Ruby devs I know, Ruby is a winning horse compared to PHP. That's true.

pron 11y ago

> So there's basically room for everyone, the algorithmists, the language hipsters, and everyone else. ;) Oh, absolutely. But I'd keep language hipsters away from important software (although any language built on a solid foundation like BEAM or the JVM is a much safer bet than one that isn't). :) > I seem to be able to pick the winners of the next horse race in technology... Ruby Wait, you consider Ruby a winning horse? I hear it's a fun language -- probably a great one -- but it's already beginning to fade after hardly having left a mark on anything but web apps (a very small portion of the software industry, and the least technological). If we coldly consider results I think it hardly qualifies as more than a relatively extended fad. It's not even nearly as popular as Delphi was in its heyday, let alone top-ten languages like Java, C, C++, C#, PHP, VB and JavaScript. In fact, I think that of all languages that could be considered Ruby competitors, Ruby has done the worst (it never threatened PHP's dominance in its field and was easily overtaken by Python -- which has been used in many more domains). Fads are often self-fulfilling prophecies, often gaining brief popularity on sheer novelty alone; but important codebases last for decades. And don't mistake the tiny Silicon Valley software startup scene for a representative of the software industry. Most software developers in the world have never even heard of HN.

subsection1h 11y ago
> Wait, you consider Ruby a winning horse? I hear it's a fun language -- probably a great one -- but it's already beginning to fade [...] it never threatened PHP's dominance If a winning horse is one that earns the rider more money (while also being more fun to ride!), then for me and all the Ruby devs I know, Ruby is a winning horse compared to PHP. > important codebases last for decades. Yes, and the author did well to avoid naming their article "Elixir - The next big language for important codebases that will last for decades". :-)
- pron 11y ago
  > ... then for me and all the Ruby devs I know, Ruby is a winning horse compared to PHP. That's true.