It seems to me that this submission (and the other recent Google code quality submission) are an amusing but perhaps misleading sidetrack. Google isn't what it is because of Larry's language choice or his coding chops. It's _much_ more about the idea and execution of page rank.

In one sense, this is the classic path trodden by people who listen to all the good advice available here. The idea of page rank was worth very little. What Larry did was learn enough programming chops to build a prototype, then used then prototype to prove the idea worked, then iterated better and better versions as the requirements became more clear and as the bottlenecks became apparent.

This is exactly the sort of advice I'd give today to anyone with "an idea" - learn enough to code up a quick prototype. If you're starting from scratch, choose a modern fashionable language since it'll probably give you an enthusiastic community of people prepared to give advice and help when you get stuck. (right now, my choice would probably be between Ruby and Haskell). Don't worry too much about code beauty or scaleability or efficiency yet - there's a very high chance your idea will turn out to be not such a great one, and you'll either pivot a few times to find a variation on the idea that is great, or drop it altogether for the next "great idea", so don't fall into the trap of investing more effort than required too early. Have a plan for how you'll do it "properly" if you get traction, but first just get something running quickly to see if anybody is likely to pay you for it...

That seems like a reasonable question to ask on a Java list back in 1996.

In other words, don't just sit there with your hands in your pockets waiting for your friend to figure out the answer!

"How do I learn to program?" "Pick a language, start building something, ask around (with good, detailed enough questions) when you're stuck." Larry's message could have been written by anyone posting on StackOverflow.

It's amazing what information mailing lists hold about people.

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The quality of something working >> any other quality of a project.

Very misleading headline.

I love how the email was sent at 4am!

Why didn't he just use Google!?

Oh... that was before the inception of Google.

Ok, sorry. title is indeed missleading. It should have been:

This was Larry Page! 1996 is perfect and then he decides to use Python after the Java mess ;)

Like I said recently http://twitter.com/#!/timetabling/status/59909520436117505

That reminds me of Ask HN/Slashdot/Reddit. Ideally I'd prefer most of them to be non-anonymous, but I know in the real world it isn't possible.

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