Where's the best place to find a programmer...

[berry120]

It's not a question of right or wrong

Well, actually, if the article is wrong then by definition it is

as I set up the title with a question mark

There's no question mark in the title, it's in the first post.

implying it's on a hypothetical basis

Not at all. If I ask someone "where's the best place to buy a TV", do you think I'm likely looking for a hypothetical article or someone to give me a place? Does this change if I say "where's the best place to buy a TV?"

The author asserts that a certain neighborhood around MIT has more programmers per capita than anywheres else in the world.

Which is only really relevant information in that certain neighbourhood.

Then he adds there's more software developers in Boston and Cambridge than anywheres else in the world.

Not really relevant anywhere.


Let's play devil's advocate though and say that is an exemplary article (it pains me to write that) and it's relevant to a lot of people who might visit these forums. All your thread says is "here's an article that discusses x". Now, if you'd have said:

Recently I came upon this article at CNET which interested me given the current general state of the economy and job market - I find it interesting to see there's certain hotspots as to the best place in the US to find a good programmer, do you agree with these patterns? I found it to be an enticing and interesting read.

Not having experience directly in the area myself I'm tempted to accept the author's conclusion; my experience however is limited. What are your views, is he correct in his logic and assertions or do you disagree?

...then we're onto something a bit better. OK, it's the same article and there's always going to be some subjectivity as to whether it's good, relevant, correct and so on. But if you'd have started with something like that, you've gone from just essentially providing a vague question and a link to providing a full description of why you posted the topic, what you find interesting about it, what you're looking for in the thread and so on. As it stands, none of that's there, so we're all left feeling a bit confused as to what the purpose of you posting it is (and following on from that, makes it look a bit like spam!)

There's also an argument for quantity. Posting about the odd article once off is fine, starting loads of threads along those lines is just nonsense.