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I love the quote the article starts with:

> Neither of us had prior experience developing mobile apps, but we thought, “Hey, we’re both smart. This shouldn’t be too difficult.”

I think, 40 years from now when we're writing about this last decade or so of software development, this quote is going to sum it all up.





> To help bring this idea to life, I enlisted one of my employees from Zeke SEO—a very talented developer with an MBA in computer science from Stanford.

That… is not a real degree.


Graduated with the highest temperature in his class.

Pretty sure they just mean a Master degree and they _think_ that’s what MBA means. I might be too charitable, but if someone doesn’t have experience with higher education it’s not an unlikely mistake.

You can charitably read it as "MBA from Stanford, with a focus on computer science-related stuff," or maybe "MBA and a bachelor's in CS from Stanford." Or you could assume that it's an MS in CS that was 'autocorrected' to MBA.

But the way it's phrased and worded... at best, it's the kind of really bad typo that shows rank incompetence; at worst, it's outright fabrication that is actively lying about the credentials; and what I think most likely, it's obfuscation that's relying on credentialism to impart an imprimatur of credibility that is wholly undeserved (i.e. "I got an unrelated degree at Stanford, but it's Stanford and how could anyone who goes there be bad at CS?").


This is well said here. Off on a small tangent, but I received my undergrad from a well known for-profit technology school that isn't respected at all. My understanding is that a resume with this specific school is sometimes thrown out by hiring managers. I am now finishing up my Master's from a very well known and respected NY private university. I have noticed no differences in the caliber of students or quality of education between the two. The students that live and breath software engineering excel, while the others do not.

I was aware of all this before, but the experience has tainted my opinion even further of higher education. Graduates of the for-profit tech school are likely to face professional discrimination, while students from the more prestigious university will receive interviews and opportunities because of a name listed on their resume.


No degree, just a kid with a Macbook Air.

i mean looking at the app's security its indeed an MBA in CS from Stanford

Stanford, Kentucky perhaps.

I think it was a typo. The computer scientist in question likely received his UGA degree in Sanford stadium, and in fairness no one else at the school was able to discern the difference between a business degree and computer science.

It really says a lot about our society in general. I believe there's a small portion of bad actors pushing stupid policies for their own agenda, but then I also believe there's a huge number of actual people who have lost any ability to reason critically and learn. What we're seeing is those people learning via trial and error while subjecting us to their live trials because they couldn't be bothered to pick up a book or trust the existing experts.

>because they couldn't be bothered to pick up a book or trust the existing experts.

It's not laziness. It's populism rejecting what they consider elitism, which includes expertise and experience.


I don't know how to square "populism" with the metric asston of propaganda coming from people whose job is literally to know better but instead chose to feed people bad information and amplify stupidity. This ain't grass roots populism...at all.

Obviously getting people hooked on harmful lies was not originally populism. But now it sort of functions like populism. Now it hurts when the lies stop.

I think we've all been the one who got fooled in some relationship. Maybe for you it wasn't a political party. But I bet it still hurt.


Are you talking about Fauci or who?

How could they not have realized that leopards eat people’s faces.

Social media is the greatest force multiplier ever invented for narcissists.

I think this also sums up most of the administration: "Nobody knew health care would be that hard"

Your quote would seemingly apply to a number of recent administrations, given the state of federal healthcare programs and legislation.

The difference is that they didn't brag about how easy it would be before failing

Always the asymmetric standards... R may fuck everything up if D made a mistake.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.

But Rs fuck things up on purpose, even things that hurt themselves, just own own the libs, and then complain about how things are so fucked up.

What other administrations have said healthcare wouldn't be hard?

Single payer is easy!

If you reject the best and only easy option from the outset because you don’t want actual healthcare, then yeah… whatever remains is going to be “hard”.

What the US has right now is a complex entrenched system of financial middlemen that refuse to abandon their rent seeking. They provide only(!) financial “services” and will fight actual healthcare tooth and nail.

Trump wasn’t strong enough — or simply didn’t care enough — to fight these people.


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what exactly does this contribute to the discussion?

No, in this case you can attribute to malice instead of stupidity. Thankfully the stupidity is limiting the amount of malice in some cases.

> 40 years from now when we're writing

"ChatGPT, write an essay about software development during the smartphone social networking boom. Find a good quote to sum it all up."


God i hope not.

For me, it was in the linked blog post

>"Now, anyone who has read Mindset by Carol Dweck, Grit by Angela Duckworth, or The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D., knows that you can be, do, and have whatever you want."

The gap between "read" and "understood" swallows so many. Also, did he use TR's "Man in the Arena" quotation? Reader, of course he did.


Understanding these might not be enough, even. IDK about the last entry but IIRC the first two works are basically in the “pop-science/self-help woo” category that hustle-culture people reliably fall for.

Software development and governance for this era, more or less yes.

There's a general zeitgeist of "Experts don't know what they're talking about" that has fed both pieces of this space. It's an Age of Doubt, as it were, but the hubristic kind of doubt, not the questing kind.


I love it. This needs to be on the front page of every newspaper, hehe. I don't care if you're a republican or a democrat, anyone going that way deserves everything they get.

> Neither of us had prior experience developing mobile apps, but we thought, “Hey, we’re both smart.

Great example of how perception and reality can differ vastly


I downloaded a save game editor for a videogame last night and the developer was honest about using AI.

But for a commercial messaging app you expect better...


that pretty much sums up the American conservative mindset, without the part about being smart

Hubris as a feature.

Great and terrible things have been done from:

> We did it not because it was easy, but because we thought it was easy.


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Eternal demo day



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