They went to Google in their twenties, and they're now working at Google in their 30s.

Listen kid, when you're 30 you're still a kid. Arguing that Google isn't ageist because you know people in their 30s there is stupid.

I know someone in their fifties at Google, so there!

Having walked around the Googleplex quite a bit, it still seems to have a younger average age those most tech companies. The average age does seem to be creeping up there, but so is the average age of software developers in general.

Here's a simple challenge for you: try writing a functional network card driver for Linux over a weekend. Now try the same in FreeBSD.

It depends on which kernel you know best. If you're a Linux developer than writing one for Linux will be easier. If you're a FreeBSD developer then writing one for FreeBSD will be easier. It is not hard to write one for FreeBSD. It's a very clean architecture with plenty of readily accessible docs.

Ever hear of 386BSD? It ran on a, wait for it, i386!!!

He's right on the lawsuit though. I remember that time at the very beginning of Linux. I remember people shaking their heads at having to reinvent the wheel just because AT&T got a bug up its butt. The source of Tannenbaum's sour grapes is that Linux stole his hobbyist marketshare. Remember the early days of Linux, and it was a hobbyist system. Use in real world production was exceedingly rare. On the other hand BSD *was* being used in real world production. It was because of that lawsuit that people chose to convert a hobbyist system to a production system.

That's only half of the story however. The other half isn't about the licensing either though, but the cultures. BSD had a very elitist culture that didn't give a rat's ass about the desktop. Even today that anti-desktop attitude persists in some BSD corners. By targeting off-the-shelf consumer hardware, Linux was able to run on more people's systems.

Google is an aberration. I work with many different companies, and the average age can vary greatly according to culture. Google has a very young average age, heck I think half the males there can't even shave yet. Startups also tend to be very young. But then go take a look at medical technology companies. A much higher average age. Animation studios: very young. Petroleum engineering: higher age. Financial trading: somewhere in between. Military contractors: much older. Other miscellaneous companies I've seen have also ranged from the very young to long in tooth.

I am talking about the SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS in these companies.

I think the two factors that push the average age downwards are: 1) The trendiness and hipness of the company. Kids want to go work for Apple and Google, and not for IBM or Oracle. Older workers shy away from these because they feel uncomfortable. Then there's 2) the cultures at software companies that emphasizes newer languages, technologies and platforms. "Newer" being relative of course.

I used to think that too, until week before last. I'm a literature major who couldn't make it past second semester calculus. Until week before last I never needed to do any math in programming beyond arithmetic.

Then I landed on a project involving OpenGL. There's a heck of a lot of math there, and a lot of math/graphics jargon. What makes it even more frustrating are all the tutorials for beginners that assume you've majored in math and never bother explaining homogeneous coordinates, frustrums, etc. Almost as annoying as they're assuming you already know the syntax to glsl. I am good at geometry, and could write very complicated POVray models, but OpenGL has been kicking my butt due to my lack of linear maths.

When all you have is HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX, everything looks like a webpage.

My big gripe is Konqueror always losing cookie policies. It seems that every time Konqueror crashes it loses all cookie policies. It's like it deletes the rc file on startup or something. This wouldn't be quite so bad if it were not the fact that Konqueror crashes ALL THE TIME! I don't care how crappy the page or the plugin is, crashing is an unacceptable response.

I should be able to reject all cookies from a site ONCE, instead of having to tell Konqueror over and over and over again.

Unfortunately, the problem with economics is that it has TOO MUCH math in it. Or rather, it has too much math misuse.

There should be a large amount of statistics, but little calculus. That's because we're dealing with human beings and their obstinate free will. So much of modern economics is about making assumptions so that you can start applying some math to the problem. But the assumptions are often unwarranted, like micro's assumption of "perfect knowledge" that can only exist in a fantasy land.

Yes, you're going to have to do a shitload of math to get a degree in economics. But you shouldn't have to. Economics is not a hard science like physics, and should not be treated as such.

Okay, if the NSA is necessary, then we can get rid of the CIA, right?

Wouldn't it just be easier to abolish the NSA?

I would really like to learn higher math. For some reason it hit a brick wall at integrals in college. Took calculus twice, had to drop out both times. I just don't feel like a real geek without it. I've watched the "calculus in twenty minutes" video, and it's good, but it's just not the same as really knowing it. It's twenty years later, and the trig/pre-calc is extremely rusty, so it would take quite a bit to get back up to speed. Oh well. I'll live.

I love government inefficiency. It slows down the works. It's the next best thing to gridlock. When it comes to infringing my rights, taking my money, regulating my conduct, and snooping into my affairs, I want the government to be as inefficient as possible.

Do you guys really want the USPTO cranking out fifty thousand patents a day?