They seem to be running a campaign that's at least 70% nostalgia. It's South Park memberberries, only for computer hardware.

Isn't that a good thing?

This. It's best if one has a pet project or OSS contributions online on Github or so. When I applied for my first job back in 2001, I had no formal qualification at all. But I sent along CD ROM with a simple, OpenGL-based game I had developed myself in C++ and got hired in favour of people with a diploma. Maybe it's a cultural thing - but at least in my peer group here in Germany, no one cares about certificates like this.

So they want to combat the spread of cybercrime? Fine. But why is no one mentioning the elephant in the room which is the fact that modern software quality is a shitshow and companies have no incentives to do anything about it? Developers largely lack the qualifications and/or resources (time to write correct software) to properly secure their products and companies are getting hacked left and right. If the infrastructure is too easy to hack, focusing on the attackers doesn't help.

Nope, that's not it. From https://documents1.worldbank.o...

"The cost-cutting is worth a drop in quality" is a very 2023-thing to write. Late-stage capitalism isn't about creating qualitative products anymore but to scam the most people out of the most money by having algorithms churn out redundant and bedazzle customers into looking at advertisements, making them want products they don't need based on fake reviews.

Back when Windows 8 and the new Windows RT APIs came out, there used to be a huge community, supported by MS themselves, discussing the new features. There is a close partnership between MS and SO, going so far as to redirect ppl from Microsoft sites to StackOverflow. But in my personal bubble, the statistics match. Most devs use Linux, a few use MacOS. It's the first company in some time where there are (a few) devs on Windows, too, but usually in some combination with WSL.

While I agree with everything you write, the big question would still remain whether functional programming really clashes with quick delivery and time-to-market. Today it is - unfortunately imho - still a bit of a fringe phenomenon and people who pick it up are usually driven by a desire to write better code which can lead to the impressions you mentioned. But I also think that if it were taught more widely, it would have many benefits without noticeable drawbacks. Yet, in the end, it probably won't happen for the same reason that we have so many other problems: people are really loathe to change their behaviour. The fact that many commenters purport to have problems with the elementary concept of immutability (which is a good thing in every programming language, functional or otherwise) tells me all I need to know about the state of the industry. ðY(TM)

This happens in pair programming when the entire team is sitting in one place and conversations can be overheard

I wouldn't know a better way to destroy productivity than having people pair programming in a public space. How is anyone supposed to concentrate on their work or their coding partner while listening to the conversations of everyone else in the room at the same time?

Don't be a dick. Should be easier to manage than a complicated document-deletion-strategy.