Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

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"It's very sweet for MIT types to make these declarations from mount olympus, but lisp is something that can take time to acquire."

Don't worry. In the Valley, people from MIT don't have a good reputation as great programmers. For some reason, their education is a lot of 'theory' and less practice.

Apart from Standford\Caltech, Some of the best schools that produce great programmers are your average state school.

I have a theory behind this, which may be correct. Learning to be a great programmer takes years, and school is just the start. People that do well enough go to something like MIT, think they are already very smart, and don't try hard when they come out.

But if you are hungry, and smart, and just happen to go to your average state school, you probably will do better, as you probably are humbler to begin with.

It seems when the rubber meets the street, in startups, building products, that's where the great programmers are made, and lisp is not a requirement to know to be a great programmer, or actually build great products. Having an idea of what functional languages are is a must, knowing them is not.

nope not the case, I know a bunch of people at these various schools, and the crux of the problem is that theres a huge culture at MIT (and moreso than many peer schools) of celebrating herculean last minute efforts that get the grade. This is great for experimental hacking on a weekend, and "good enough" for research, but it does not encourage an incremental design sensibility, owing to its last minute nature.

This is not to say that any of these people are bad at what they do, they just have bad habits that they need to walk off, but first someone needs to tell them!

the crux of the problem is that theres a huge culture at MIT (and moreso than many peer schools) of celebrating herculean last minute efforts that get the grade

That's a very astute observation. I work and have worked with many MIT people, and even TA'd an MIT course. The "all nighter" hazing ritual culture was very prevalent. To this day, my friends who went to MIT prefer to work 24 hour shifts, late nights, and on weekends - even though they've been out of school for a decade. In addition, MIT had a culture of boot-camp style negative reinforcement. "You suck, are not smart enough and are lazy, work harder" was the driving attitude. (at least it was in the late 1990s)

In contrast, when I moved to the west coast, all the Stanford people I met were more about basking in their obvious awesomeness and mastering time management. Get the project done early, schedule everything around ultimate frisbee team and rock climbing club, go to the outdoor concert on Friday night and still make it up to Tahoe for the weekend.

I think it's much simpler than that: Most good programmers are self taught. School is just increasing their exposure and nailing down some good habits.

Even fricken DeVry will help you with that if you are already motivated.

While I'm not an MIT student, I think the school puts a huge emphasis on being pragmatic ( see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530659 ). Also, given the huge disparities in abilities of the freshmen there, I'd reckon that, more often than not, an MIT education would be a humbling experience.

My dad, an MIT alum (though in chemistry, not CS), likes to tell the story of how whenever new grad students arrive on campus, everybody's wearing Phi Beta Kappa rings. By the second week, they've all disappeared. When everybody's got one, flaunting yours displays arrogance a whole lot more than intelligence.

I've seen weak work from a few Stanford grads.

While I have great respect for these institutions and the aptitude required to succeed within a difficult program, it's not a guarantee of quality.

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