Not surprised there would be a “heated” discussion as a result of this one link, that measured only those who engaged it, and how? I opened the link, hit Submit just to see what would happen… now the percentage of HN users who are competent programmers is even fewer than before, by that metric.
This was part of a larger evaluation comparing the Hacker News population to people on Reddit programming subreddits.
Here is a very heated discussion of the result:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33293522
It appears that Hacker News is perhaps NOT populated by the programming elite. In contrast, there are real wizards on Reddit.
Surprising, I know.