There are a ton of programmers in Bentonville, AR. I know some of them. The needs of Walmart are narrow, so it's not going to be the skunkworks-lousy valley, but for what Walmart does, it creates a community of IT contractors.

That's not what pyrito said, though. Pyrito claimed that the necessary and sufficient condition is a critical mass of rich people, a fairly doctrinaire application of "trickle down" economic theory. But we can see quite clearly that the Waltons, despite being fairly numerous, close in geographic proximity, and unbelievably rich, haven't triggered a Silicon Valley-like phenomenon.

I would be surprised to learn the Waltons actually live and spend much of their time in Arkansas.

Interesting! I assumed the kids or at least grandkids would have moved out.