Alex St. John

Can someone tell me what the recent negative news around OpenGL (see for instance http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching-opengl/) means for the future of WebGL? I don't follow the graphics world from close, therefore my question.

Root against Microsoft all you want - I just think that stack ranking is too convenient a scapegoat. Valve and Google stack rank, too, but that doesn't mean they're not great companies. Also, Wikipedia's not necessarily an infallible source; see [1] for evidence that stack ranking dates back to '96 or so (at the latest). [1] http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/08/30/microsoft-review-time-capsule-…

It sounds like you're attempting to carry the water for Elon Musk. Good luck with that. The very definition of a toxic brogrammer, Alex St John literally glorified the benefits of slavery and Microsoft's imperialistic dominance of game developers in his own words [1], describing his infamous Toga Party / Roman Orgy / Slave Auction he threw in the Spartan Stadium at the 1996 Computer Game Developer Conference (which I and my team from Maxis attended, and personally witnessed the slave auction and free silly string and live lions -- not all were caged, some were just tied up): [1] http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-pt-2/ [offline and banned from archive.org] >"Sex, violence and debauchery were all hallmarks of a great Roman “orgy” and I wanted to come as close to capturing that experience as I could get away with." >"The slave auction was also a special occasion. The Roman guards were rounding up the losers from the gladiatorial events and anybody who was offending a “senator” or Cleopatra and throwing them in the slave pit. Once a sufficient number of slaves had been collected from the party, Gillian returned to the stage to auction them to the audience for the gold they had won in the games. Gillian could set any base price she wanted for a “specimen”, if the audience wouldn’t pay the price the slave would be “thrown to the lions”. We had configured a “pit” full of foam to one side of the stage and directly in front of the first caged lion. A failed slave…

> Hell, his own offspring doesn't want anything to do with him. That is obviously not true. She even wrote blog post about him. That is a clear indication that, as a minimum, she cares a lot about him. And Alex is proud of his daughter: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/21/i-apologize/ Daddy is very proud of her. She’s no millennial slacker that’s for sure.

For those that haven't seen the slideset: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf Also, a discussion on reddit from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/4faadv/programmers_ar… At some point, I thought it had to be a parody, but apparently people like Alex St. John exist and actually believe what they say. This has to be some of the most vile stuff I've read coming from an industry veteran in a while.

I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, but after reading through this it was pretty damn hard to justify any benefit of the doubt: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf

Here's what she's rebelling against: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends * If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone * If the relationship breaks down the engineer is gone * The paycheck goes to HER * Why does SHE want her husband or BF to work for you?

Companies are generally seeking to hire the latter type of engineer; you are required to become one or you don't get (decent) work. Case in point: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf

His website [0] seems to be having database connectivity issues at the moment, but Google's cache caught it[1]. [0] http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves/#comment-4045 [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCVIzSi52RgJ:www.…

The author may call it thought provoking but i feel there are some quite dangerous ideas in his mind and a severe lack of perspective. While saying he hates wage-slaves, he seems to treat everyone under him like a slave. This pdf on the website is kinda scary, i couldn't help but to feel offended: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf Also, using the word millennial just tells me you are a grumpy old guy yelling at kids to get off your lawn.

> Was this seriously a talk that was given somewhere? Looks like it: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-presentation… > Do people actually accept this as actionable advice? Hopefully not, it's actually a bit shocking anyone in 2016 would write/present things like "RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends" or "Real engineers don’t burn out until their wives or GF’s do."

Heh, no. WinG was a disaster. It took years before game developers trusted Windows again. From http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/ "Disney had done a deal with Compaq Computers to ship the Lion King Game pre-installed on a million Compaq Computers destined as Christmas presents for children everywhere across the country. The NEW Presario line had a NEW Cirrus video chip and NEW Cirrus video driver never before tested with WinG."

Alex St John has good details on why using existing epidemiologically formulas don't work: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/01/23/forecasting-demise-facebook/ Example: "The amount of time you spend sick with the flu is constant no matter how many of your friends ALSO contract the flu"

http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/06/getting-fired-from-microsoft/‎ Typically, these people should run their own companies or consulting instead of working for other people.

Oh,it gets worse: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves/ - he doubles down. http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/18/recruiting-giants-2/ - He triples down. http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/21/i-apologize/ - he makes sure he insults EVERYONE he can think of. Personally, I really enjoyed the read - it is very different to my personal experience, and fascinating to me. It is scary stuff, but I'm not really sure what I disagree with - or more accurately CAN disagree with. By that I mean that I have (would?) never work as a games dev, I have no frame of reference for how hard they work, so how can I really criticise anyone that has actually done it based on my very different experience? For all I know, it really does require the sorts of herculean effort he describes, and while it is as bad as he claims, maybe, just maybe, that is the only way to make games dev possible?