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Comment by theHNAcct | Hacker News Reader

I agree with most points here but surprised by "Musk is not a coder and has never worked for a company that develops code as a core business function". He was a part of x.com / PayPal

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Yeah, the author didn't seem to do his homework here. Musk is extremely competent at programming. Wrote and sold a game when he was 12, started and ran two s/w companies. He approaches real world like its software - that it can molded as he likes.

I think that’s a partly fair assessment. He hasn’t code in decades, saying he is a coder when 99% of his career is management is wrong.

PayPal isn’t a social network. They are different beast altogether. Elon likes to work on companies with tangible assets such a money transfer, cars or rockets. Social media’s asset is attention seeking from users. That’s much harder to monetize. Only ads have been able to stick.

How do you know this? I find it very likely he has written some code here and there through the years. Whether that is Python, C++, Matlab or R, who knows. As chief scientist at SpaceX he at least needs to do some modelling on a regular basis that requires - at minimum - tweaks to some code.

What?! Do you know what the job of a CEO is? I answer your comment with your question. How do you know he tweaks some code? What proof do you have?

In an Elon fan's eyes there's nothing he can't do !

Board meeting -

"How's, like, the code that gets the spaceship in the air and back down again. Is it all working ok?"

"Yes Elon, should work fine. It's basically just typing."

"Great! Should work without any problems."

Sure, it's speculation, but remember that he is the Chief Scientist (think CTO) as well as CEO. Major technical decisions go through him.

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