Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
All: much of this thread is of low quality, below the standard that Hacker News discussion should adhere to, because it doesn't engage with what pg's essay actually says. It merely uses it as a trigger point for passions about other things, like H1Bs and Infosys. In other words it goes on a generic tangent, and generic tangents are the vectors we most need to avoid if we want discussions that are substantive instead of a handful of always-the-sames.<p>When I see cases like this, I've been asking: would the Principle of Charity [1] have helped here? The answer is usually yes. In this case, the idea of pg lobbying to flood the market with cheap programming labor is not only demonstrably wrong from the article (which talks about a much smaller order of magnitude and endorses <i>lowering</i> H1B-style quotas), it fails a laugh test for anyone familiar with his arguments in general.<p>The essay may be wrong, impractical, or impolitic; if you want to criticize it, there are plenty of legit criticisms you could make, starting with: how are we to objectively evaluate who the great programmers are, when it has often been argued (including by a certain essayist) that this can't be measured?<p>But if you're going to dispute an article—any article—on Hacker News, you have a responsibility to engage with what it really says. The Principle of Charity is the best way I know of to formalize this requirement, and unless someone can make a case for any bad consequences of doing so, we're planning to add it officially to the HN Guidelines in the new year.<p>1. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity</a> and <a href="http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html" rel="nofollow">http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html</a>