Re:Ask HN: Why do such strong opinions exist in our industry?
by jamesb93 on Monday August 12, 2019 @04:59AM
(#20673702)
In my experience a lot of people who post on hn have a shallow view of how technology relates to a diversity of people who use it. Most are coders for a company who make web apps, or business applications or have been in coding long enough to develop esoteric affectations for LISP. Every time I see an incredibly strong worded opinion I get the impression they've never stepped outside working with a computer company driven by a 'demand' for a 'product'.
Just look at the comments of this thread right now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672051
Re:Ask HN: Why do such strong opinions exist in our industry?
by tcbasche on Monday August 12, 2019 @05:31AM
(#20673834)
Yeah I was just reading that and thinking the exact same thing. Lately I've been thinking 'man, Elixir has been getting some traction' until I realised I'd only really read that on HN in the comments sections.
Computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to capture people as they were. So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture.
Basically everyone roots for their favorite team.