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Comment by preordained | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who finds it weird how articles like this seem to fetishize programming talent? How we desperately need to come up with ever more sophisticated filters (programming simulators, in this case) to extract only the purest high quality programming material? Gattaca, here we come!

I mean, it's efficient...not sure how I feel about a future where a conversation, or even the dreaded whiteboard become relics of more innocent times. That said, great game :)

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The filtration process is terrible; "everyone knows" that some people are more able than others, but it's very hard to quantify and very vulnerable to prejudice. And a particularly modern problem: if you give people a take-home test, they can outsource it across the globe.

I'm starting to think that the way out of this is guild-like structures where you qualify by producing a "masterwork" recognised as such by your peers. And then you don't have to prove yourself any more.

If the challenge is just allowed to be itself and not an employment filter, then it can be fun for all involved. I'm keeping an eye on Stockfighter myself, and I know people who do Project Euler for fun.

>I'm starting to think that the way out of this is guild-like structures where you qualify by producing a "masterwork" recognised as such by your peers. And then you don't have to prove yourself any more.

Isn't this essentially how PhDs are granted?

Optimistically, yes. Realistically, it doesn't seem like it to me, and even when it is actually as described on the tin it doesn't seem super useful for predicting future performance.

Yes

And of course to another programmer writing a 100 byte assembly program that draws something interesting on the screen is just a fun gimmick and "real programmers" are the ones making the same program 10x slower and consuming 1000x more memory while using some new Java API

(I'm more of the former myself)

but if doing it through the Java API means you can ship it in an hour instead of 2 days, still might be worth it.

In the end it's really dependent on what tools you're used to. And extremely dependent on the goal. For most software, the objective is to accomplish the task, and performance doesn't matter (until it starts to matter of course).

I think judging people on the level of abstraction of their tools could end up being counterproductive and alienating. Maybe you never want to write in Java, but dismissing those people out of hand could mean that you might not have an opportunity to show them why you enjoy writing your assembly programs.

You're absolutely right that working in a higher level language has a value and it would be crazy to do it another (low-level) way if you can do it using Java or another higher level language

Of course the number of people that could do it in Asm is smaller than those who could do it in Java (I guess in the same way only few people can drive a Formula 1 car)

I fell into the trap of thinking that writing 100byte assembly programs was "real programming.

I used to make small demos. They'd take about a day each to make my Atari 800 do something amazing. I was assigned to create 14 interactive screens for a game at work. I thought to myself "14 screens. I make a screen in 1 day so 14 days I'll be done". Turned out to be closer to 90 days. Of course maybe I just suck as a programmer but my takeaway was real programing is more work than "drawing something interesting on the screen".

You are not the only one.

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