The programming advice it provides is good[0], but I'm ultimately struck by how whiney and entitled this sounds. People respond in this manner when they feel like they have some sort of position they have personally gained through their own work that is now being threatened. The arguments often only hide an insecurity that the methods the "traditionalist" used to gain their position are dying out, that a new breed is forming, using new techniques that they don't understand, but that they inherently recognize have the potential to be universally (or near-enough) superior, if given the time to be developed. Thus the need for the immediate, preemptive attack: to cut out the nascent ideology before it has a chance to establish roots.

I think the anti-intellectual aspersions cast towards computer science students is a good indicator of this. The techniques he holds dear are only possible because of computer science. Computer Science is a field of applied mathematics that some people dream will one day be treated like a field of theoretical mathematics, to gain standing and respect in the world of mathematics that traditionally looks down upon the applied fields like CS, statistics, cryptography, etc., in much the same way that "aht" artists look down on illustrators. I think he writes off an entire field of study just because occasionally, specific people--caught in this cultural divide between applied and theoretical mathematics--write some shitty code.

Let's see him come up with IEEE floats on his own. Let's see him conceive of 2's compliment signed integers on his own. Let's see him come up with an assembler on his own. Without prior exposure to the concept.[1] You don't get Dijkstra's path finding algorithm with an ivory-tower attitude that doesn't care about the practicalities of implementation.

It's not like people are or were getting paid to do this. People did it for fun. If you don't like something that people do for fun, just walk away. The reason these things happen, that we see "bad" examples is not because people are getting worse at doing this stuff, it's because new people are finding it easier to get started. Angry diatribes like this are just attacks at new people when they need encouragement and guidance.

[0] Well, to a degree. His field is "clever hacking of X86 assembly". A similarly "clever hacking of dynamic programming languages" exists that necessitates completely different techniques. I'm reminded of the 30-LOC spreadsheet in JavaScript that showed up about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6725387

[1] I'm reminded of a joke. Some years in the future, a man goes to God and says, "God, science has progressed so far that we don't need you anymore." God smirks a little and replies, "Oh really?". Man says, "Yeah, and to prove it, I challenge you to a duel. Anything you make, I will make, too." And God answers, "Okay, well, how about a man?" And the man replied, "No problem. We know chemistry and biology and genetics, we can synthesize everything we need to make a man." He bends down and starts to pick up some dirt and some other materials to start making amino acids when God interrupts him, "Hey now, go get your own dirt."