I see what you mean. So do you think a pure tutorial would have been better?
This is our first HN post so I was trying to strike a good balance between talking about what we think the future will look like and briefly mentioning what we're up to.
I could definitely have kept it to a tutorial, though, and saved the plug for what we're building for a later Show HN or Launch HN.
I think a much clearer argument would be: 'Developers want great tools. JavaScript has too many tools which induces the paradox of choice. A better tool might replace JavaScript in the future because of this.'
I personally am developing applications with minimal JavaScript a la Pinboard.
I’ve spent the last 3 1/2 years working on a computer science degree from Stanford. In the past year, I cannot think of a time my understanding of the concepts mentioned in the article provided me a particular advantage in my programming work. That time includes a research position, an internship at VMware, an internship at Nicira (bought by VMWare), a self-initiated Unix course, a TAship in networking and a few quarters teaching introductory computer science in the CS 198 program.
I found this article intentionally contrarian for no useful purpose. Gayle, the founder of Career Cup cited at the end, runs a business grooming programmers to work at large companies (see her book 'The Google Resume'). Google and other large software companies are notorious for asking puzzle questions. Jeff Atwood, founder of Stack Overflow, has repeatedly expressed a hate for these questions. I've bought one of Gayle's books. It was well-written and helpful. However, I assume most programmers starting with Codeschool, Lynda and others are just dipping their feet into the world of software not shooting for working at Google tomorrow.
Mastery of computer science concepts is important in the long term. But as a 'long-term' programmer (~2 years of serious programming), I have yet to implement my own complex data structures in production use beyond simple JSON objects. Libraries simply abstract most of these problems efficiently enough for most work.
I read a comment recently stating 'the best programmers don't need frameworks'. Of course! The best produce frameworks themselves! And more importantly, the best produce frameworks, languages, and tools to educate the next generation of programmers in best practices. (See zachgalant's comment above.)
For those of us in software, let us not challenge ourselves to achieve personal mastery and also to enable mastery and education for others.
My cofounder spent an entire year with this exact problem. He worked with one developer who dropped off the face of the earth, payed a designer for work, and otherwise busted his ass for an entire year after graduating undergrad. He worked at a pool while his peers went to work for the likes of McKinsey and Goldman.
Now, I and another technical cofounder are working with him. We also have designers and a potential new technical employee.
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