"This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even the apartment I live in."
I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.
Of course then he dives off into this strange diatribe about being forced to interview the same way we peons have to despite his previous works - nevermind the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel (most of the devs using it haven't either, for that matter).
I also think he is wrong on this latter point as - even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had.
"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."
the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel
Just wait a minute here! Isn't this weird? It's like hiring designers and refusing to look at their portfolios.
The interview process puts people through all these weird contortions so we can (among other things) get some indirect indications of how they code. Why not just read their code? We want to know if they can collaborate on a project, why not look at the result of projects they collaborated on?
I think in the corporate world at least, programming has become a commodity.
I agree. Unfortunately I think interview processes are designed to accommodate the majority of applicants - and in the corporate/enterprise world, the majority of applicants have zero open source work.
Then I would ask: why is it that designers almost always have their portfolios looked at when they are getting hired? I think we're being slaves to an illogical social pattern.
"I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. "
There are famous car/cellphone/guitar designers, (I am not sure about construction workers!) but they (like programmers) are famous within their communities. Even Linus would probably be better recognized by a programmer than a non programmer I think. There are also many many programmers who have contributed to the Linux Kernel and don't have that kind of celebrity. I see this as perfectly fine way for the world to work. Zed seems to expect (or crave) something else.
I agree that engineers of products are often unknown (as people) to their consumers. As other people pointed about that is almost the definition of how a product works, except in very rare cases.
I was addressing Zed's (implied) expectation this state of affairs was somehow surprising, unexpected or bad, and worth bewailing. At least that was the vibe I got from the post.
The idea that we should (in some normative sense, in an ideal world) know the people behind the products we know "better than we know the products" at the risk of being "second class citizens" was what I found bizarre. He takes an obvious truism - most normal people don't know much (or anything) about the creators of the products they use - and then goes off on a rant on how he still gets asked "meaningless" questions for his job interviews. What I was trying to say (no doubt I could have written it down better) is "But that is as it should be".
"People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products."
I mostly agree - except that a good part of their products (or their leadership position on their products or "fame" ) is or results directly from the code they wrote.
" even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had."
People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.
I think Zed could've ended this sentence at aren't famous. If you ask anyone who doesn't closely follow tech who these folks are, you're likely to get blank stares. Maybe they'll recognize one of the names, but not be able to list specific achievements.
As plink says, these people are famous within their communities. Just like I don't know who designed the stability systems on my car, someone else might not know who designed the graphics engine for Doom.
I do find it interesting that Zed writes a piece about how there are no famous programmers, while simultaneously being voted to the top of HN and (again, in his sphere) being a fairly well-known name.
"The idea that we should (in some normative sense, in an ideal world) know the people behind the products we know "better than we know the products" at the risk of being "second class citizens" was what I found bizarre."
We're in agreement there.
"I mostly agree - except that a good part of their products (or their leadership position on their products or "fame" ) is or results directly from the code they wrote."
Certainly they wouldn't have been famous without coding anything, sure, but at the end of the day the quality of their end result is what mattered - not the code they wrote to get there. Okay, maybe that isn't true so much with DHH due to the nature of Rails... but Carmack is famous because people like to shoot Nazis and zombies. Romero is (okay, _was_) just as famous, and I've never heard much about his programming skills - he seems to be famous purely for having been co-founder of Id.
I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.
Of course then he dives off into this strange diatribe about being forced to interview the same way we peons have to despite his previous works - nevermind the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel (most of the devs using it haven't either, for that matter).
I also think he is wrong on this latter point as - even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had.
"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."
I'll agree with you on that one.