Personally, if Paul does a 'greatest hits' list for his essays I would vote to include that one in the list. I'm interested in your reference to it though, can you say more about how it relates to this discussion?
Are you suggesting that discrimination is one of the 'fashions' that Paul refers to?
Its statements liks this:
"IMO the reason why many older developers are worse than younger developers is because they THINK they are better than the younger developers."
Which causes me to wonder. We could certainly debate the results of a study that polled a few thousand developers between the ages of 20 and 60 and asked them to self evaluate themselves with developers older, the same age, or younger than them. Except we don't have that study, do you know of one ?
Paul's essay is a good one on open mindedness, and it gives great examples of how people can over-turn or distance themselves group-think by seeking out the unthinkable.
I certainly cannot claim to know what you are thinking but it reads like you think that labelling older developers as lazy, self-deluded, parasites is an example of giving voice to something that is 'true' but 'unsayable' because of some sense of societal impropriety.
I can't really comment on whether or not its 'true' because I've not seen any process where that question has been analyzed. The data from the Stack Overflow study says that people who self-report as older on Stack Overflow give more answers and have higher karma as a result. I didn't see anything in the data that would support a conclusion that these folks are making value judgements about their younger peers or that they no longer wish to improve.
"I was just really upset by the tone of the OP."
Paul wrote in his essay:
"The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't."
I guess I'm trying to figure out is what you're trying to say. Are you threatened by the idea that someone "older" who has more experience than you is probably "better" than you are by some definition? Or are you trying to argue that your youth and mad social skillz has permanently elevated you above the skill set of people who came before you?
I'm not critical of either view, I'm just trying to understand the data that leads to it. I liked the analysis of the Stack Overflow answers because it was data + analysis. As someone who is always looking to hire top talent, understanding effectiveness is something that helps me do my job better.
