Do you have any references for this, my good man? I don't mean to question your comment; I want to learn more about how this has been established and the nature of it.
I don't have any references to academic research, but my own experience interviewing people supports the claim. When presented with a simple coding problem, some people just breeze through it, others take most of the interview to finish it, and some candidates just can't solve it at all.
To the extent to which coding on a whiteboard is an indicator of real-world productivity, there definitely seems to be at least 5x difference.
Honestly, I am completely unsure why we are discussing this article, or why it showed up in a place like HN. It is clearly based on shutterstock's agenda in acquiring perl developers.
I coded perl full-time for a year, straight up, for 10+ hours a day -- using it as the glue to hold a rudimentary distributed system together.
To show that I myself am not biased, I will admit Perl has a lot of nice things, but it also has a lot of undesirable things. This article only concentrates on the former (and doesn't even focus on what could arguably be the right nice things to speak of).
I think you're all missing the point. Its purpose is not to be a commentary on/solution for programmer archetypes, it's just a technological proof of concept. A concept which uses said archetype as an example use case.
I think you may be missing the point about mechanical keyboards, my friend.
The appeal of a mechanical keyboard stems from the switches under the keys that offer varied pressure curves, pressure thresholds, and physical feedback (depending on the switch type).
Both the apple wireless keyboard and MBP laptop keyboard use scissor switches which are the typical laptop keyboard switch type. Some people like this switch type, some people do not.
But if you're to say something like "it's easily better than a laptop keyboard" you can only make such a claim based on size or number/position of keys, since both use the same switch type. I'd wager a guess that the nature of the key switches is probably what your parent is interested in.
I have a 13" MBP and a USB apple keyboard. The keys really feel different, despite same layout. External keyboard has easier to feel clicks and requires more pressure. Could be the use on my laptop, though (2 years vs 1 year).
You may be correct in that instance, then. The older USB apple keyboards likely use rubber membrane key switches rather than the scissor switch type. In which case, the feel of the keys would definitely be different. I personally was referring to the newer apple wireless keyboards.
I have a 2010 MBA, a 2010 Apple Bluetooth keyboard and a 2011 Apple USB keyboard (with number pad). They all feel different, even if the switching mechanism is the same - the Bluetooth one is best (by a long way).
This entire comments thread has a higher than expected level of subtle/downplayed humor. I appreciate subtle humor, but I don't know if Hacker News is the place for it.
This is why they say teaching is a great method for cementing your memory. It forces you to master whatever you're explaining so that you can explain to someone else in a way they can understand it.
