[gamegoblin]

Yyyyep. Step into one of Walmart's cubicle farms in Bentonville, Arkansas and it's mostly middle aged folks hacking away in C# and VB.

[Kerrick]

Or step into somewhere like my workplace in downtown St. Louis, a skyscraper built in 1911 renovated into modern offices.

The bootstrapped, 6-year-old former startup I work for is filled with people from their 20s on up past 50s making, selling, and supporting Software as a Service, with the developers hacking away at a RESTful API and Ember.js apps. Plus, we share the building with Kickstarted startups like Pixel Press, VC-funded startups like TrakBill, etc. and we're a couple blocks from an incubator + coworking space with 80 startups at every stage.

Being away from Silicon Valley doesn't make you automatically boring, or a cubicle farm, or even full of old people

[collyw]

So having all the buzzwords is what makes you cool?

"RESTful API", "Ember.js apps", "Software as a Service", "sharing the building with kickstarted start ups".

[gamegoblin]

Wasn't saying it was. Actually, we have a YCS13 company here in Northwest Arkansas (DataRank).

[aceperry]

Interestingly, the Walmart Lab in the bay area is a big promoter of html5, javascript, and all of the latest web tech.

[bengotow]

Yeah - they've actually got many people using NodeJS. http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/why-walmart-is-using-node-...