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Part of the reason is that I haven't done a comprehensive historical investigation of the meme. What I have done is actually read the handful of articles that I've seen used to support it (here and elsewhere), and examined who have been involved in propagating it, and drawn a conclusion that I think is pretty obvious if you know the terrain.
Like a lot of HN comments, it was something that I hastily typed at work in between other tasks. I'll think about returning to the subject for a more thorough examination if I have time. :)
Please consider providing a positive narrative - "this started a trend, this expanded it, that was the result, here's where we are at presently, that's the expected future". Picking apart a succinct and sourced (even if weakly) post is much less convincing.
Having been part of the "culture war"[1], I nonetheless couldn't just post my lived experience here, as it wouldn't stand on its own. Thus I went out of my way to build up narrative from supporting sources. It's not exactly how I perceived it personally, but that's the closest version I could support with sources, i.e., as close to objective as I could provide in under 15 minutes or so.
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[1] I'm using different moniker for the purpose, due to the high tensions and the mudslinging involved.
I had this vague recollection of "learn to code" being spouted by different publications. But the more I look into it, the more I think we're just mis-remembering news stories from the time.
All I'm finding are articles about Rusty Justice. That's not a journalist telling miners to code. At least not directly. Maybe that's the implicit message. But I think that's reading into it too much. It's a human interest story, not a prescription.
I think a lot of people are angry at the media, and looking for anything to validate that anger. There's no shortage of media scandals you could point to. But in this specific case, I'm not seeing evidence. Maybe journalists deserve more credit.