[aeoleonn]

I see a pattern:

- Someone writes an article with a catchy title.

- Someone [semi or quite] influential notices, and says: "Hey, let's write an article from the opposing perspective, to be contrarian, and see if we can also make some good points."

- Me: [Doesn't click and] thinks "Would ya look at that? An article/author which is contrarian probably just to be contratian. I'm gonna find something else to read..."

[throwaways885]

Even so, intentionally trying to be being a contrarian is a good way for industry to avoid groupthink and cargo culting. It's really valuable. I'm sure somebody will write an article called "Do Things That Scale" soon.

[TameAntelope]

Oh, they definitely wrote those articles, over and over again. Google is lousy with, "Paul Graham was wrong" articles, he tends to attract that kind of attention, given the way he writes (personal, about his experience, sometimes mistaken for "this is always right").

[sdfhbdf]

I think you might have been downvoted since Paul Graham is not ordinary folk writing clickbaity titles here. He indirectly founded the website you're commenting on so your comment might have been received as bashing on him.

[Jtsummers]

This is most likely why GP was downvoted:

> - Me: [Doesn't click and] thinks "Would ya look at that? An article/author which is contrarian probably just to be contratian. I'm gonna find something else to read..."

Low-value post that seems to be deliberately avoiding real contribution and participation in the conversation while simultaneously admitting that they didn't read and (almost certainly) won't read the article. There's no point to these kinds of comments, and they should be downvoted.

[xirbeosbwo1234]

He is "ordinary folk writing clickbaity titles". People here just pay too much attention.

[iainctduncan]

So PHD in computer science, wrote programming books still recommended by very smart people 30 years after the fact, launched, ran and sold successful startup, and now successful VC is... ordinary? People like Peter Norvig say "On Lisp" is one of the best books on lisp! I'm in the software acquisition business, so I talk to founders getting ready to exit every month. That set of combined successes is most emphatically not ordinary.

[iainctduncan]

I find it very strange that people are voting this down. I mean seriously, we're talking about whether someone writing about development is "ordinary"... Given the above credentials, you're seriously arguing that PG is in the same category as ordinary random dev writing programming articles? Seriously? He's just not. That's just wrong. He's got stellar academic and business credentials - that combination is not common. I guess haters gonna hate and all that.

[warlog]

https://worldwarwings.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/survivo...

Keep talking about business "success" stories and their secrets.

[xirbeosbwo1234]

He isn't in the same category as an average programmer. He's way lower, since he doesn't work in the field any more.

He is something of an expert on business, I suppose, if you take having lots of money as evidence of smarts rather than as evidence of bad character.

[armatav]

Vastly overestimating the average programmer.