TheFullMontyPython
12 HN mentions · mentioned in 12 months, 2019–2026
3:14 · 2.3M views · Dec 4, 2007
The classic Monty Python sketch in which four Yorkshiremen compete to claim the hardest upbringing, each story more absurd than the last.
Quoted as a joke whenever commenters one-up each other on past hardships.
12 comments from Hacker News
> Well before AI co-pilots something happened to the good old admins--they started to disappear only to be replaced by "AWS devops" (their job titles) who have never wired a network using routers, switches, and cables. I noticed that they started lacking basic networking knowledge and couldn't set up networking inside AWS. They just didn't know what a gateway, NAT, or subnet is. I see the same arguments about higher level languages. All of the tech industry is about standing on the shoulders of giants. I do believe that lower level knowledge can help a great deal but using this argument I can say something like: Kids these days don’t know basic assembly, they have no idea what an or/and/nor/xor gate is, they’ve never built a computer from components (no, not cpu/mb/ram/etc, I’m talking transistors and soldering). Maybe LLMs are different but I don’t think they are, they are yet another tool that some people will abuse and some will use wisely. No different from an IDE or a higher-level language in my book. I have next to zero idea how many things I use daily work (like my car for example), it doesn’t stop me from being able to drive where I need to go. I have configured lower level networking equipment in the past and I couldn’t be happier that I don’t have to do that drudgery anymore. All I’m saying is this is a dangerous argument to make because someone can always one-up (one-down?) you. “Oh you had NAT? Luxury! In my day we didn’t even have a network, we had to….” (See als
Maybe? But I'll pick paid with a nice UI over ugly/cli-only almost every time if it's something I'll use regularly. I'm not the target market for this specific tool but I pay for a number of tools that I can technically do on my own because I like looking at nice things. Sue me. I get joy from well designed and clean UIs. I can always use more joy in my life. Polish and ease of use are important to me when using software. Don't get me wrong, I spent a ton of time in the terminal and using less than pretty tools but when possible I like nice tools that do a task well. Then again if all you see is a "simplistic ffmpeg frontend" then I don't know if I can make you understand the value in accepting less overall functionality in favor of a tool optimized for your specific workflow. And some people, not saying you, take a pride in using the lowest-level, most featureful, more obscure tool. They wear it as a badge of pride and chide anything else as a "toy" or "simplistic". I find this mindset absurd. I all for going to the lower level when needed but people that have this attitude best be writing assembly by hand or they are just cosplaying being "smarter". There is always a lower level, just because someone goes to an arbitrarily lower level doesn't make them "better" but that's the feeling I often get from people like this. Reminds of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch: this video
Before that time you needed very big iron to do much at all, so unless you were in the right place, as well as the right time, it was hard to participate. I began on 8-bit micros (assemler...an assembler woulda been a luxury to us...we typed in machine code and calculated negative offsets in us heads..+) and also a PDP-11/45 running V7 when I was in middle school. My perception is that prior to the 11/45, 11/70 generation I would have had to have been very lucky to have a usable computer to program. Having said that, I remember learning Pascal over one summer holiday when I was a kid, but I had no computer capable of running a Pascal compiler until a couple of years later. + this video
Just to bring to levity to this discussion, your quote very much brings to mind the hilarious and ever-relevant Four Yorkshiremen[0] sketch from Monty Python. Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.' [0]: this video
HN is both tech oriented, full of nerds and people with probably lower than average EQ and also an echo chamber in the sense that nerds at some point start geeking out about this and turn it into virtue signaling. "Look how bad I am at reading people." "I'm worse than you at..." "I'm so bad that..." this video > Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us