Hacker News Reader

Comment by tvanantwerp | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I've ever heard of a Congressman going to GitHub, poking around in some open source code, and then asking very cogent and relevant questions about it. This video is incredible if only because of that.

View on HN

Yeah that's the most interesting part of this video. Good to know at least 1 person in Congress knows what "code" is and what "GitHub" is, and even more good that they're knowledgeable enough to know what Rust is, that different languages exist and may have different features and stability, and what nightly builds are. Since overseeing software and data security regulations is part of their job.

i have noticed over the past few years that more and more people with a technical and science background go into politics. it happened in singapore, china, a few countries in europe and it's probably happening more and more everywhere.

in general i think this is a positive sign.

Perhaps they did their own research on Libra and prepared those questions before and then asked Facebook basic questions about the design & implementation of Libra.

Congresspeople often come from backgrounds other than law. It could have also been his aides helping with this.

In country, that background is acting, singing and dancing (and punching).

Probably an intern on his staff did the research.

>Riggleman was in the Air Force for eleven years, serving as an intelligence officer. He then worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency.

He may just be familiar with programming.

Most people in the government that I've dealt with oversee projects and are really risk and contract managers. I took the question more as "why are you using a new language and nightly builds of that language." It's exactly the kind of thing that most program managers wouldn't even consider.

No it sounds like he was either an engineer or engineering manager somewhere in the DoD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Riggleman

Associate of Science (AS) in Avionics Systems from the Community College of the Air Force in 1996.

Graduate Certificate (GradCert) in Project Managment from Villanova University in 2007.

Air Force for eleven years, serving as an intelligence officer. He then worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency

Reply on news.ycombinator.com