Comment by conwy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conwy | Hacker News Reader

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Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be.

Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to discover and specialise in.

Specialisation is just fine, thank you. It’s perfectly fine to consider oneself a good programmer!, having mastered only one or two languages.

Americans, please quit the silly moaning and self flagellation and get on with your day jobs. Thanks.

> Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary?

The author explains very clearly his reasoning:

"Here’s why I think it’s important. First, there is often an unrealistic expectation that an experienced engineer knows every technology in their field."

> this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be.

That's exactly the kind of mindset that Dan is trying to dispel.

You might not mean to do it, but the tone in this message seems to be quite condescending.

I believe you are making a generalization that is quite unnecessary. Surely not all Americans are like that, and I am sure plenty of Europeans share that mindset. (I am one of them, I like being the best in something as I am competitive. In sports, games or programming).

In my neck of the woods, the stereotype for this kind of behaviour would be Japanese more than American btw.

Either way, I do agree that this post is a bit useless. No one is expected to know absolutely everything there is to known. Why know the web when you program embedded devices for the car industry, for example :)

Dan Abramov is a Russian living in the UK.

He works for an American company.

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