&#62; Ah, the Dunning-Kruger effect at its finest. :-)<p>While I find it regrettable that the implication of this remark is that I'm some sort of idiot who doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about (making him think he does), I understand how you could see this as a presentation of it.  I'm not basing my claims off the fact that some of the guys I've met "know everything," I'm basing my claims off the fact that many of the most experienced developers I know don't know shit in comparison.<p>Granted, it's not a fair comparison of 20-something to 40-somethings at all; I've met far more mediocre 20-something programmers than I've met 40-something programmers, and I'm at a place where fantastic 20-something programmers tend to aggregate.<p>That said, it's not fair at all for the claim to be made that 20-year-olds are dumbass Rails coders [1] who need to just shut up and listen, because many of us are comfortable operating in a large variety of languages and large projects and are EAGER to listen to worthwhile advice (I probably average a half a post a day? Maybe less?  I assure you that I visit HN <i>far more often</i> than that).<p>All that said, many of the biggest home runs in the short history of our field have come from 20 year old kids who did their own thing.<p>[1] Which is not, in any way, to imply that Rails coders are dumbasses.  It was just the implication of ggp that the 20 year old rails coders are.