Some people are astonishingly intelligent

[Dan B]

Facebook is not my favourite company. I can just about believe that MZ and his peers want to share everything with everyone all the time, I cannot believe (if he really is this smart) that he believes everyone else does too. Facebook privacy controls are baroque and complicated and change arbitrarily and frequently - if he really is that clever and he really does want to give us the option not to share publically, why does he make it so damn difficult? He's on record as saying that if he did it all again he'd rather have made the default public, plus his advertisers would obviously far rather everything was public - he really is being disingenuous, and rather obviously so


Remember, if you're not the customer you're the commodity for sale.

 

[GilesM]

If he had sat down one weekend and read a book called how to make great beer, and by Monday morning he had given the book back, and within a week had started breweries and pubs, he could be described as intelligent, but he didn't, he completely wasted his time. The man's a fool.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I think I'd rather be a billionaire and socially incapable than the impoverished social butterfly that I am.

I can't look at people like Mark Zuckerberg or Winston Churchill. Their achievements make me feel suicidal, frankly.

The problem is that you wouldn't appreciate the things you do now from that perspective. Mark Zuckerberg can keep his kind of intelligence and his money. I'd rather understand feelings.

 

[Dan B]

This poll sucks. Why is there no option for "billionaire and socially capable"?

 

[mickle]

Yeahbut. Can he replace the back wheel on a 2003 Gazelle Impala?

 

[snailracer]

If these software types were so bleedin' clever, they wouldn't need to invent "new" programming languages every few months .

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Using a microwave?

Can he use one at all, some folk can't!

 

[GilesM]

Yeahbut. Can he replace the back wheel on a 2003 Gazelle Impala?

Exactly, there's useful intelligence, and then there's pointless showing off.

 

[palinurus]

He then began writing high-quality Perl, right from the word go on the Monday, having never even programmed anything in his entire life before!!

I knew kids like that at school.

The bullshitter

 

[Archie_tect]

Given the opportunity to re-do something no-one would repeat the same mistakes - there would always be improvements and modifications made.... MZ would be no different if he was creating Facebook now. He did something no-one else thought of at the time- that's talented and deserves credit. Nothing to stop any one of us designing something better.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Given the opportunity to re-do something no-one would repeat the same mistakes - there would always be improvements and modifications made.... MZ would be no different if he was creating Facebook now. He did something no-one else thought of at the time- that's talented and deserves credit. Nothing to stop any one of us designing something better.

I think the Winklevoss twins would disagree with you there.

 

[Archie_tect]

I think the Winklevoss twins would disagree with you there.

That serves me right for not checking facts!

 

[Dan B]

He did something no-one else thought of at the time

What exactly would that be? Geocities, friendsreunited, orkut, friendster, sixdegrees, myspace all predated facebook

 

[Archie_tect]

What exactly would that be? Geocities, friendsreunited, orkut, friendster, sixdegrees, myspace all predated facebook

Sorry DanB, only recognise friends reunited... just goes to show that potentially better ideas may not be commercially viable- as Betamax discovered.

 

[Manonabike]

I was watching an interview with Mark Zuckerberg the other day, he was the guy who founded facebook. He comes across as being unbelievably intelligent.

He was describing how he started and he said his flatmate (roommate?) wanted to help him but knew nothing about programming computers. Zilch. Nada. Nix. Zero. So on the Friday evening, MZ gave him a book to read, which myself possess - "Beginning Perl", by Wrox Press. It is fully 647 pages in length and is pretty dense too.

Anyway, bearing in mind that the guy had never ever programmed anything in his entire life and knew nothing whatsoever about programming, he read the book from cover to cover in a weekend! That's not all. He then gave it back to MZ saying, "yeah, I get that", and, "doesn't seem all that complicated, anyway there were a few mistakes in there". He then began writing high-quality Perl, right from the word go on the Monday, having never even programmed anything in his entire life before!! He didn't even have to work through any of the examples or exercises, he just did them all in his head!!!

Now that feat wouldn't be all that surprising for someone who had spent years writing code - I picked up Python and wxPython in a day, but then I've written a lot of commercial code in my time. This guy went from zero to expert in two days flat. He simply sat down and memorised the entire book and understood it too, and corrected the author's mistakes, on the fly, in his head.

You've got to be yanking my chain! Pulling my fat one! Having a slight jape!

I quite simply sat there, listening, with my mouth hanging open ...

Mmmm - I'm going to say that seems like an exaggeration to me. I'm pretty sure if the facts were investigated then we would find out things weren't quite as Mark claims.

I have worked with some very clever people..... some years ago I recruited a fresh young graduate with a first in Maths from Cambridge and I saw him developed into an outstanding C++ developer but I'm sure he could not have done what Mark is claiming this other chap did.


Good topic though!!!