I met Stroustroup in about 1997 at a convention and got to spend maybe 30-60 minutes chatting with him and a small group. I've always felt he was mistreated by many who slandered C++. Came across as remarkably humble, glad to share his time and thoughts with a bunch of know-nothing undergrads, and as someone who simply tried to do the best he could to contribute to his field. A real mensch.
> Too many young people think they can optimize something, and then they find they've spent a couple of years or more specializing in something that may not have been the right thing. And in the process they burn out, because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing.
Happy to see some cross pollination between Slashdot (my go-to from 2008-2013) and HN (my go-to from 2013 till now). Also happy to see that Slashdot comments have not really devolved and remain readable and useful.
I've noticed an upward trend in the quality of comments on Slashdot since the Great Reddit Moderator's Rebellion of '23. It's worth giving Slashdot a quick check every once in a while.
Maybe he thinks his own disappointments could have been avoided by better communication, and thus his advice is to "learn to communicate well, not just to code".
It's not bad advice on its own, but I sense this is a naive view of communication and what problems communication can solve.
Communication can not make people agree with ideas that are orthogonal to their world-views or philosophies if those serve as pillars/supports/moats for their security. Diffuse but I can't articulate it better now (... the irony).
Hm. I sense there is an expectation that "good ideas will win" if only we communicate them properly. But, when people are invested in <ideas that are orthogonal to your good ideas>, communication is not the right tool. Like trying to convince someone who believes they are the winner to take on the identity of the loser. The assumption is that "goodness" is universal/objective and the cause for disagreement is misunderstanding.
One version of this is trying to convince someone to switch language/framework/platform/paradigm, because your suggestion is objectively better. On the receiving end, it sounds like "admit that your investment into <old thing> was a waste and instead become a novice in <new thing>".
Another version is trying to convince someone to change business strategies. And so on.
Many ideas are bets on the future, but people are stakeholders in different versions of the future. If your argument amounts to asking someone to freely give up their stake in the future, it will fail. The more clearly it is explained, the worse it sounds on the receiving end.
Not sure what Yobbo meant but my reading was that people, regarding jobs, have expectations that won't really work out. For example studying to become a philosopher or training for a professional football team.
And then they better learn to code because there's more and better jobs on coding than philosophy or football.
most of the time, old timers have a lot of good advice (which also most of the time in the context of their time). too bad, most of them are not good story tellers and approachable to young men/women. but, it's not only the job of the old timers, it is also the job of young men to dig whatever valuable from them.
In any given context, old timers have the same odds of being good storytellers as young people do with engaging in authentic curiosity and the willingness to be patient and listen.
