Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackcviers3 | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of a single famous software engineer that continuously redefined the entire industry, every single year. Like, some language designers and tooling creators have redefined the industry once a decade. But every year? For what definition of redefine does that apply?

View on HN

Linus Torvalds took 14 years between releasing Linux and git, so he's out.

Or that loser Steve Jobs. Look at him. I mean he had a good few years in the beginning - Apple I (1976), the Apple II (1977), the Apple Lisa (1978), but then fails to do anything redefining until the Macintosh (1984), takes another break for 4 years until the NeXT Computer (1988), 10 years! until the iMac (1998). 2001 was a good year for him with iTunes (2001), iPod (2001) but again takes a 2 year break before iPhone(2007) and then skips out again for 2 years until the iPad in 2010.

Or just look at all the gaps in the honors and awards section in wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Honors_and_awards

Is there anybody that's "redefined an industry" every year running for more than 3 years straight?

None. It's all plain BS that capitalistic companies are using as a leverage to gamify the market. Engineers are particularly bad in playing this game and are easy to deceive so that they start to believe it is a real thing (as seen in some comments above).

When a football team does not meet the expectations, it is the manager who gets blamed for the failure and who gets the sack and rarely the players. We, sadly, live in a different world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com