[hateCS]

> While it may be perfectly acceptable to ignore the lower-level details when first learning some new technology, or even when using it for personal use only, that sort of ignorance is not acceptable when working on systems that are meant to be used seriously.

I'm a self-taught web developer. While I have probably picked up some programming fundamentals/best practices through experience I have very little interest in computer science or learning the low-level details of every technology I use.

I probably couldn't get a job at most SV/SF startups, but I run several WordPress sites that have millions of monthly visitors and that have traffic spikes of 100,000+ visits in 2-3 hours at least a few times each month. I'm paid very well and I don't need to apply rocket science to do a good job.

Meanwhile I have friends with CS degrees at hot VC backed startups using all sorts of crazy technologies and advanced programming techniques for sites that get maybe 100,000 visits a month.

If you ask me, ignorance is premature optimization, overengineering and hiring expensive people to apply skills you're nowhere close to needing.

[Pacabel]

I think you've benefited very heavily (a lot more than you may realize) from the work of people who did have more formal training, and who used that knowledge to build the systems that you in turn have built upon.

You're right, it does take much less effort and skill to run moderately high-traffic WordPress-based web site these days. That wasn't always true, though. In the 1990s and even into the early 2000s, it did take skill to get the most out of web servers with clockrates below 200 MHz, maybe 16 MB of RAM if lucky, very limited storage, and limited network connectivity. Specialists were needed in cases like that.

What you seem to consider "ignorance" is usually just considered "forethought" and "planning ahead" by those involved. It's easy to rail against so-called "premature optimization" until you've seen that kind of prudence prevent unexpected scalability disasters from happening. For a young company, like the kind your friends apparently work at, a little bit of foresight and effort at the start can significantly mitigate the harm that can come from unexpectedly large demand. In some cases this is what will determine whether or not that company survives and thrives.

[hateCS2]

> I think you've benefited very heavily (a lot more than you may realize) from the work of people who did have more formal training, and who used that knowledge to build the systems that you in turn have built upon.

And your point is? Am I supposed to create a shrine to the people who built the first microprocessor?

> You're right, it does take much less effort and skill to run moderately high-traffic WordPress-based web site these days. That wasn't always true, though. In the 1990s and even into the early 2000s, it did take skill to get the most out of web servers with clockrates below 200 MHz, maybe 16 MB of RAM if lucky, very limited storage, and limited network connectivity. Specialists were needed in cases like that.

I'm sorry but it's not 1999. I can't imagine anyone winning a potential client over today by saying "You couldn't do in 1999 what you're doing without someone like me" or "I will architect your website so that it can run smoothly on a server with 32MB of RAM."

> What you seem to consider "ignorance" is usually just considered "forethought" and "planning ahead" by those involved.

So struggling to hire (because you're looking for overqualified candidates a lot of whom don't want to work on a simple website with less than 100,000 visits per month) and increasing your burn rate by paying $140,000/year fully loaded for web developers you can call "engineers" is "forethought" and "planning ahead"?

I know enough people who have worked at typical VC backed startups to know that most of them never grow big enough to have the kind of scalability and performance challenges they'd all like to believe they're going to have. And as a practical matter, if you look at the great companies that have emerged in the past decade (think Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and how their systems have evolved as they scaled, it's pretty clear that if you become a massive success, you're going to need to substantially rewrite your code base anyway and by that time you won't have to hunt for the highly technical engineers you need. They will be knocking on your door.

The biggest risk to just about every new startup is not having a developer who is a little too friendly with an ORM and who might have to turn to StackOverflow for help with a complex SQL query. It's getting a good enough product launched before you miss your market window and/or run out of cash.