Every week some thing is more important than the old thing from previous week. Next, we'll hear about stuff like "food", and "friends" and "love".
This necessity to shock is a gimmick. It does work for sensationalized news for example, where from time to time a certain crime gets more coverage and importance than others, even if the same type of crime is happening simultaneously.
Typing is cool, ok, and so is marketing. But the germinating view is simplistic: All things being equal, an awesome engineer who types faster is better than an awesome engineer. But things are never equal.
"Learn Typing" plays with a primal human necessity, apealing to the easier denominator. It makes people feel good to tell them that they can be better professionals in two weeks.
"Learn Marketing" plays with our frustations. So many people have lived this situation: The product was perfect, but maybe if I had just told about it differently, if I had just made my boss understand, if I just knew a way to convince others how much awesome I am, etc.
And let's not forget about yesterday's article about Honda, thriving in dificult times, but run by engineers. The truth is that we (human beings, not specifically the HN crowd) like to hear about what we like. I see so many indications of the little club that exists in here (reddit is even worse nowadays), but that's not the point, because this is normal. The point is that all this shit doesn't matter, but we like to pretend that it does because we get to be happy for five minutes.
Managers have this disease too, with their self-help books and curiosity to know who moved their cheese. These things are like happiness injections, making us feel good until the next shine stuff appear.
BTW, I do believe typing and marketing is important, but in no way they're even near the top qualities I am looking for in a programmer.
The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001177.html
Every week some thing is more important than the old thing from previous week. Next, we'll hear about stuff like "food", and "friends" and "love".
This necessity to shock is a gimmick. It does work for sensationalized news for example, where from time to time a certain crime gets more coverage and importance than others, even if the same type of crime is happening simultaneously.
Typing is cool, ok, and so is marketing. But the germinating view is simplistic: All things being equal, an awesome engineer who types faster is better than an awesome engineer. But things are never equal.
"Learn Typing" plays with a primal human necessity, apealing to the easier denominator. It makes people feel good to tell them that they can be better professionals in two weeks.
"Learn Marketing" plays with our frustations. So many people have lived this situation: The product was perfect, but maybe if I had just told about it differently, if I had just made my boss understand, if I just knew a way to convince others how much awesome I am, etc.
And let's not forget about yesterday's article about Honda, thriving in dificult times, but run by engineers. The truth is that we (human beings, not specifically the HN crowd) like to hear about what we like. I see so many indications of the little club that exists in here (reddit is even worse nowadays), but that's not the point, because this is normal. The point is that all this shit doesn't matter, but we like to pretend that it does because we get to be happy for five minutes.
Managers have this disease too, with their self-help books and curiosity to know who moved their cheese. These things are like happiness injections, making us feel good until the next shine stuff appear.
BTW, I do believe typing and marketing is important, but in no way they're even near the top qualities I am looking for in a programmer.