Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

One young guy named Linus Torvalds upset a whole pile of holy applecarts, as a student, no less, a guy called Mark Zuckerberg built one of the most visited websites on the planet, two other guys built the most frequented search engine while still in college and so on.

He doesn't care at all about not being in charge. He cares about people not wanting nor caring about getting some deeper levels of knowledge required to do their jobs properly and as a cause he sees that they are money oriented first, and tech oriented second.




Linus is 45 years old. He's not a millenial, he's a greybeard.

Zuckerberg never made any technological advances. His company was a market success but it was based on LAMP... nothing technologically novel about it. Not even the concept was novel--it was a direct myspace rip off.

I'm sure there will be millenials who have an influence on the technology and direction of software. But they certainly aren't the people in charge TODAY and they certainly are not responsible for the state of tech today.


If you think 45 years old is a greybeard then I think I've lost you, and Linus made most of his impact before he even had a beard.

Facebook was anything but a Myspace rip-off, Myspace was to Facebook as Geocities was to Digital Ocean or Altavista to Google.


Linus' beard maybe isn't yet long enough to count as "grey" but, in any case, he's not a millenial. He entered the field circa 1990, whereas this self-proclaimed greybeard author started in 1995.

So for the discussion of this article Linus is even older/greyer than the self-proclaimed "get off my lawn" author.

Zuck is a millenial but he's far more of a businessman than he is a programmer.

Zuck hasn't really programmed since Facebook took off. He's a business owner/operator, not an engineer. Writing an MVP LAMP webapp that is then fixed up by others is NOT the same as having an influence on the processes and procedures used in the construction of software--which is what the OP is complaining about.

Facebook was a business success not a technology success.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: