To imply being 19 or age in general has anything to do with being vocal or a fan is agism. What makes zalew believe those posts where made by 19 year olds? Last time I checked, HN did not require age verification or disclosed such information about its members.
We're quickly approaching that insane point in this discussion where we're now forensically dissecting what appears, to me at least, to be a throwaway comment by zalew. If zalew meant the comment to be a deep critique about the intersection between age and vocal fan boy-ism then I've missed that.
I don't see the comment as ageism. I see the comment as constructing a strawman in order to point out that the more vocal proponents a new technology has, the more attention and interest it can draw on a site like hackernews. It's a subset of the problem that on the internet, in front of an anonymous audience, points of view (or arguments) that are forcefully presented and appear to be logically consistent can often beat out points of view (or arguments) that are less well reasoned and less forcefully presented, even if they are more factually correct.
Thus 'python is dying' becomes a thing because it doesn't have the same level of noise surrounding it as other technologies. The lack of noise doesn't mean python is dying, it means python is less noisy (whatever that actually means).
But to get back to the point I was trying to make. The comment doesn't really say anything about being 19. Sure attach an 'immature' or a 'lacks experience' and now we're trending towards stereotypes that could imply ageism. Same as if zalew had said "a 56 year old condescending, out of touch, past their prime, vocal grandfather of two, great grandfather of 6, fan boy."
But simply sticking 19 next to some other words doesn't automatically imply ageism. And anyway I was reacting to ElliotH's need to defend himself from the characterization made in the strawman argument. If you want to go around fighting all things ageism that's your right and you're welcome to do it. But to spend time fighting strawmen, well, that seems a bit ridiculous. Although, at this point no more ridiculous than the amount of time and effort I've put into this reply. So I guess we're all suffering from the same thing this morning. Must be something in the company coffee.
I agree with you for this particular case but you are mistaken if you think that sarcastic and ist are mutually exclusive. Sarcastic comments of a ist form can (and nontrivially often do): mask sincere ism; be a more socially-acceptable-looking way of expressing actual ism; encourage ism, especially of a casual degree; exhibit societal/subconscious/not-actively-malicious ism; or create a generally hostile environment for people of an oppressed class of *.
So, yeah, probably an overreaction for this particular occasion, but it's not so easy as writing it off as "sarcasm".
>To imply being 19 or age in general has anything to do with being vocal or a fan is agism.
It's also true.
>What makes zalew believe those posts where made by 19 year olds? Last time I checked, HN did not require age verification or disclosed such information about its members.
Most of the pages linked touting new technologies have an "about" page or a bio of the author.
Also, older devs have enough years of experience with other people --on the job, on the web, on conferences etc--, to know that it's mostly young developers that go crazy over such things.
