
How Software Companies Die by Orson Scott Card (1995) - adamnemecek
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt#
======
ColinWright
In case you'd like to catch up on previous discussions of this, here are some
of the previous submissions.

The majority of the conversation and comments are on these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866486)
(netjeff.com) : 45 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821)
(carolyn.org): 23 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5372726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5372726)
(zoion.com) : 14 comments

There are also a few comments on some of these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842)
(apocalypse.org)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568)
(zoion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094)
(netjeff.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968)
(zoion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310)
(zoion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2523005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2523005)
(fuzz-box.blogspot.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2734040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2734040)
(fuzz-box.blogspot.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993706)
(zoion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4776844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4776844)
(zoion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4956448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4956448)
(cmu.edu)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182867)
(cmu.edu)

~~~
Udo
You've been doing these for a while, so: thank you for taking the time! It's
just that I get the feeling your "job" should be done automatically by a
sidebar or something ;)

Seriously an automated element containing "previous discussions about this
subject" would be a nice addition to HN.

~~~
d4nt
I get the feeling Colin may have already automated this and it's a bot posting
these things.

~~~
ColinWright
I did have, but it's been permanently disabled. I got too much grief over it.
I have scripts to assist, but all these posts are "by hand". They don't take
much time, and occasionally during the search and confirmation phase I stumble
across other things that are interesting, so there is some reward.

~~~
keithpeter
Script assisted manual commands are something I use a lot as well, I can hack
up scripts and cope with minor changes in data format &c.

I'm interested in the reaction to automated posting but the comparative
acceptance of 'by hand' posting. Is that simply frequency? Are you selecting
which historic threads to run searches against?

~~~
ColinWright
I think in part many people were just upset at having a 'bot posting. Thin end
of the wedge, and all that. Others didn't like the tone of the message, seeing
it as a rebuke.

This is why when I do it "by hand" I make sure I hunt out previous
discussions, and if there are none, make a note of that. I can script it all,
but with the general hostility I've decided that I'll run the searches for
myself because there are often interesting things turn up. Then I post my
results because, well, why not? If I found it interesting, others may as well.

More than once I've caught myself constructing replies on negative results and
deleted them. I may yet just stop entirely.

~~~
chris_wot
I, for one, would be very sad if you stopped posting to HN.

------
brazzy
Was this as ridiculous a pastiche of clichés when it was written in 1995 as it
is now?

Or did programmers really only start to have social lives, dislike permanent
crunch mode and plan before coding in the last 20 years?

It sounds to me like Card read through the Jargon file, i.e. the self-image of
a considerably earlier subculture of programmers, took it at face value, added
some hyperbole and wrote it up as a kind of revelation.

~~~
purringmeow
And giving up "sleep, love and health"? As if I am going to part with my
health for whatever salary...

~~~
michaelgrafl
Not for whatever salary. For doing what you're good at and makes you feel like
god.

~~~
purringmeow
If I get an RSI I wouldn't be able to write code :)

------
andyjohnson0
Some context. According to [1], the text is from the March 1995 issue "Windows
Sources" magazine [2].

Does Card have any experience of business or software?

[1]
[http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees](http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Sources](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Sources)

~~~
Jare
His book Lost Boys contains pretty fair descriptions of the videogame industry
and development processes in the 80's, and he did a good amount of videogames
writing in the 90's, including Monkey Island, The Dig and the disaster that
was Neohunter.

~~~
jmcgough
What was disastrous about Neohunter? It looks like an interesting idea, but
other than the old box art (with description of the game) I can't really find
any information on it.

~~~
Jare
The gameplay was stale and the visuals tried to abuse pre-3D technology to add
depth and immersion to what was an oldschool 2D point and shoot, but the tech
and art were simply not up for the task. Ed Kilham (of Tie Fighter fame) is an
awesome guy but he can't make miracles. Orson Scott Card's story was
essentially invisible behind the mess, and apparently he didn't care much for
it either.

[http://www.gamefront.com/gaming-todays-exclusive-
interview-w...](http://www.gamefront.com/gaming-todays-exclusive-interview-
with-author-orson-scott-card/)

"a side-scrolling shooter that I’m not sure was ever published, since it was
coming out just when first-person shooters completely took over the genre.
However, for that game I came up with the slang that I later used in battle
school in the Shadow books and in the movie scripts I’ve written for Ender’s
Game. Nothing gets wasted."

(disclaimer: as they were finishing Neohunter, Ronin hired my bro to do their
future tech and rendering, and IMHO things improved a lot for Ronin in that
area)

------
efnx
Some of his essay is meant to be funny and I think some people are missing
that. It's an interesting critique in the relationship between programmers and
management. Just try to enjoy it.

------
PhasmaFelis
We all know that OSC is a horrible bigot, right? I feel like any sort of
fatherly advice he emits needs to be suffixed with "...unless you're gay, then
you should be in prison."

~~~
myhf
Once you realize that 100% of his writing is about the self-hating gay Mormon
experience, you notice a lot more subtext. In this piece, the junior
programmer who becomes a middle-manager to please the marketers is a metaphor
for gay Mormons who marry women to please the church.

~~~
Shahor
wtf did I just read :s

~~~
bsenftner
I agree! Some of you are painting a fiction here with your overzealous OSC
bashing.

------
motters
Sounds pretty much like Google

------
tempodox
I swear, it's the truth.

------
cevaris
Does this mean somewhere, somehow Ender's "mind game" is being developed? I
would even settle for some battle simulator game...pretty please.

------
ankitjain
Need an essay from him on how derivative traders becomes great tech investors
:)

------
michaelochurch
I like some of what this essay has to say, but generally disagree with this:

 _When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you 're a
hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first
grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be
spring already._

That's depressing, and unhealthy. Programming _well_ is a marathon, not a
sprint. Neglecting your health burns you in the long run. In fact, programming
is so mentally intense that you probably shouldn't be doing it more than 50
hours per week. A couple weeks at 65-80 is fine, if you're in the zone and
truly engaged, but you're probably not doing useful work if you're on your
sixth 90-hour week in a row. In fact, I think the people who can truly sustain
a solid 70 hpw (much less 90-110+, because long hours get exponentially more
difficult) are less than 1% of the population, and not the most enviable for a
bunch of reasons I won't get into.

Also, the ability to get to 100 pounds overweight without only mild loss of
professional and social status (instead of the severe loss women face) is a
male privilege of sorts.

I agree with the general message. Flow is important, and The Game is pretty
engrossing. I had a few months in a managerial position (a while ago) where I
never wrote real code and the itch to do something real got very strong.
Coding is more fun than a video game, if you do it right. But I can't agree
that neglect of health is a good thing (I've seen its end-stage, which is
pretty horrible) and, if you let that sort of thing fester, it will make your
work worse in the long run.

~~~
grammaton
"Also, the ability to get to 100 pounds overweight without only mild loss of
professional and social status (instead of the severe loss women face) is a
male privilege of sorts."

Women don't face a severe loss of professional status if they put on weight,
unless their employer enjoys being cleaned out in court. And as for a loss of
social status - try being an obese man for a while and see how that works out
for you. They get ripped on just as bad as obese women.

~~~
ktd
>Women don't face a severe loss of professional status if they put on weight,
unless their employer enjoys being cleaned out in court.

You know, there are a lot of things that happen in the world despite not being
legal.

~~~
grammaton
Sure, but this wouldn't be one of them. If a woman even _suggested_ their
employer had discriminated against them on the basis of weight, then lawsuit
or not, their employer would be _crucified._ Sorry, but being overweight is no
worse on a woman than it is on a man - not that it's peachy for either of
them.

