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A comment on I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it). Parent comment

Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by overgard on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:34PM (#11413859)
You're entirely right, but it's a stupid plan. You know what happens when you get a bunch of college kids to build things? You get something that, uh, looks and acts like a thing built by a bunch of college kids. IE, a dumpster fire. It turns out experience matters. I can't even get mad at the people that perpetuate this, because they're going to get what they deserve.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by rwjwjuwjudf on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:40PM (#11413884)
Many of the most valuable tech properties today were built by college kids, or better yet college dropouts. It turns out that having your whole life ahead of you matters, because you're more willing to take risks.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by overgard on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:43PM (#11413906)
My point isn't that young people are incapable (some of them are great), rather, that the people that think they can build something by taking advantage of naivete are going to quickly discover that for every young brilliant programmer, there's 10 people that will some day be good, but at the moment they're inexperienced and they'll create junk if they're not mentored.

But it's true, many of these companies are designed to be flipped, technical excellence might be a secondary concern. Ninjas beware.

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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by rwjwjuwjudf on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:45PM (#11413915)
Oh yeah, agreed, but capitalism doesn't care, just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks...

Probably building something in grad school helps.

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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by pixelp3 on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:44PM (#11413910)
I think you severely underestimate the amount of serious work put into all these "tech properties" (I'm guessing you mean Facebook/Dropbox) by very experienced, in-demand engineers.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by bunderbunder on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:51PM (#11413941)
There's a survival bias at play here. We remember the (very) few companies that survive to become tech giants. We don't remember - haven't even heard of, really - the vastly greater number of ventures that crash shortly after liftoff.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by Retric on Saturday April 02, 2016 @08:47PM (#11414348)
Yet, if a young company built by collage kids is bought out the parent company generally dumps the source code as worthless. That might tell you something. The same thing happens at successful company's you just don't see it. Twitters Fail Whale did not end because they brought on more collage kids.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by bdcravens on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:53PM (#11413947)
Started, as in MVP. Additionally, some of those properties were built while in college by brilliant developers who dropped out to run their then growing companies. There have been many many many more companies started by kids who have failed miserably.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by fishnchips on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:42PM (#11413900)
Or maybe it's more about having less to lose. Once you have kids and mortgage you're less likely to take risks.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by x5n1 on Saturday April 02, 2016 @07:01PM (#11413988)
It was not built by college kids. A prototype was built by college kids which was then commercialized by billionaires. The college kids got the credit, and some dough, and the billionaires got 70%+ of the profit. The stuff was built by a team of engineers, some young and some old.
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by gaur on Saturday April 02, 2016 @07:38PM (#11414125)
> IE, a dumpster fire.

Indeed it is.

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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by terinjokes on Sunday April 03, 2016 @03:04AM (#11415238)
I think that's unfair to Edge. :)
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Re:I’m a boring programmer (and proud of it) by spitfire on Saturday April 02, 2016 @06:37PM (#11413872)
A VC payday?

Seriously though, that's what many of these people /will/ get. Worse, they'll actually believe it was their own talent that got them there. The world is a cruel and unfair place.

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