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Comment by avindroth | Hacker News Reader

I am not an IRC user, but I wonder whether Python Paradox[1] applies to IRC users.

To soak wisdom from top-tier hackers in the field, you want to go where they hang out. IRC might just be the hacker playground.

That alone makes a convincing case for using IRC.

[1]: http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html

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That essay seems so wildly out of date, even though it's only a decade or so old.

> And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know.

These days I think Python is every bit as much a corporate language as Java is, and I'm sure huge numbers of people learn it to get jobs at the conventional tech giants like Google as well as small startups.

Python somehow became the default language for data science, which is like the new php+mysql in terms of a high labor-intensive field attracting very new, short-term opportunity, unskilled coders.

>That essay seems so wildly out of date, even though it's only a decade or so old.

Funny how fast tech moves. I think the essay is still completely relevant, though. You just have to find something to replace Python with. Maybe things like Rust, D, Erlang, Haskell, etc. give the same indicators today that Python did 10 years ago.

I like to hang out in IRC channels of things I'm just starting to learn for this reason. I can't answer much of anything in #clojure, for example, and I don't have much to ask. But I like to scroll up through the channel every few hours or even days to see what people are commonly asking about, or seeing if I can work out the solution to someone's question myself and compare my thoughts to the answers in the channel. It's a nice way to passively learn something. Like hanging out with a group of people who are always doing or talking about something.

Mailing lists tend to be nicer for slow or more niche topics. I've seen maybe 10 messages total in all my time idling in ##dsp, but there are several active and friendly mailing lists on the topic. It was surprising to see names of authors of books and research papers just casually responding to questions via email.

IRC is half doers and half newbies, I started to think that projects ML are the hackers playground.

projects ML?

mailing lists

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