New Article by Hackers and Painters guy
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There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
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There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
He makes a lot of interesting points and very few judgements, nice one. Of course, if some people don't want to actually think they might have a negative reaction... I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
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There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
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He makes a lot of interesting points and very few judgements, nice one. Of course, if some people don't want to actually think they might have a negative reaction... I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote: I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. The original meaning of the word hacker, is an exceptional good programmer that are on the "good side". Crackers are the bad guys ;) Today people use the term hackers about crackers, which have given the work hacker a baad sound... :sigh: - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!" ShotKeeper, my Photo Album / Organizer Application[^]
My Photos[^] New developersite: RealDevs.Net -
There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
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He makes a lot of interesting points and very few judgements, nice one. Of course, if some people don't want to actually think they might have a negative reaction... I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote: I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Same here. To me, "Hacker" implies a seat-of-the-pants coder, frantically fixing problems that would have never even existed if there was a robust design (or any design at all for that matter). Personally I would prefer a logical, creative developer who can plan his/her work and effectively work his/her plan. ~Nitron.
ññòòïðïðB A
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There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
This reminds me of all those essays in pop magazines trying to identify who really is "hip". Or who is a real "punk" vs a "poseur". It all usually boils down to: 1. Those who are, are. 2. Those who think they are, aren't. 3. Those who are, are great. 4. Those who aren't are as sheep to those who are. 5. Be very nice to those who are, because they are as gold. Actually, I think the prototypes of these articles are medieval Catholic discussions over who is or isn't a saint. And those are presumably predated by discussions of who is(n't) a prophet, a seer, a magician, a warrior, a hero... The exclusivity of the criteria and the subjectivity of final judgement make such articles irrefutable, provided the author him/herself possesses enough cultural currency to cow the masses. And millions pore over them, getting little stabs of excitement when they see elements that overlap with themselves, feeling a brief moment of disappointment or humor when they see something that they are not. Why do I take exception to this whole business? Because it's a very sneaky rhetorical method for putting across a very specific authorial agenda. If you remove the author's mystical claptrap about the ineffible qualities of a "true hacker", you see that he: 1. Doesn't like Java because it's popular. 2. Likes Python. 3. Likes open source software. 4. LOVES Perl. In a nutshell, he's taking his own opinions (and, to be fair, observations) and putting them in the mouths of these mystical, unidentifiable "hackers" who cannot be argued with because they are essentially smarter than you, the reader. You, the reader, cannot argue with those opinions because they are held by the "hackers", who are smarter than you. If you think you are a hacker and therefore have the right to argue, you really don't, because if you think you're a hacker you aren't :). So if you argue that Java is, in fact, a good language, or that you can creatively program on a Windows NT platform, you aren't arguing against Paul Graham, a mere mortal--you are, in fact, arguing against the uberclass of "hackers" he has set up. But no one but Paul Graham can say what the opinions of those hackers are, because if any self-described "hackers" come forward and say that Java IS a good language, they are inherently wrong because they violate the "a self-described hacker is not a hacker" rule. Of course, the way to trump Paul Graham is to say that you know hackers too, and that they believe X , Y, and Z... So basically it's this huge, convol
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There's a new article on Paul Graham's site, the author of the recent "Hackers and Painters." The article's here^ There's a /. about it here^ too, but the /. crowd are generally getting all sensitive about it. I won't comment on the article here, suffice to say that i'm trying to learn lisp in my spare time :omg: - - but I wonder can us cpians do a better job than /. when it comes to intelligent comment. :)
let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
Fascinating article, and in complete agreement with my own experience as an engineer, and as a manager of engineers and programmers. The traits the author attributes to great hackers are the same for any field that combines technology and creativity. There's plenty of good quotable bits in there, too, such as: "VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM." :laugh: "My kid was Inmate of the Month at Adobe Mountain Juvenile Corrections Center" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City
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Trollslayer wrote: I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. The original meaning of the word hacker, is an exceptional good programmer that are on the "good side". Crackers are the bad guys ;) Today people use the term hackers about crackers, which have given the work hacker a baad sound... :sigh: - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!" ShotKeeper, my Photo Album / Organizer Application[^]
My Photos[^] New developersite: RealDevs.NetYou can primarily thank the ever-ignorant news media for that one... ...well, that and the worse-than-campy "Hackers" movie. X|
Microsoft MVP, Visual C# My Articles
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He makes a lot of interesting points and very few judgements, nice one. Of course, if some people don't want to actually think they might have a negative reaction... I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote: I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Me as well. I'm probably as old-school as the CP crowd gets in terms of programming and it's always meant to me since I first heard it many eons ago to refer to someone who is accomplished at doing "neat hacks" which is to say someone who knows so much about the underlying system that they can accomplish something in the briefest and most elegant set of code that would take a mere mortal a lot more time, effort and result in more complex and needlessly complicated code due to their lack of fundamental understanding. I.E. a neat hack would be writing a screen saver in less than 256 bytes of code due to the true understanding of assembly language, underlying hardware etc rather than doing it in 56kb of code in a higher level language. How in the world hacking got to be used as a derogatory term that applies to people breaking into computer systems is a bit of a mystery. Probably someone in the press wanted to sound cool and used it that way because they had heard a programmer say it once and were stuck with it forever afterwards.
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods. - Ambrose Bierce -
He makes a lot of interesting points and very few judgements, nice one. Of course, if some people don't want to actually think they might have a negative reaction... I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote: I'm not sure about how he uses the term 'hacker' though, it has quite different implications to me. Old timers lime me still think of a hacker as being a coder, probably a good one (but maybe not the best on documentation and the other crap that gets in the way of of cranking old code.) Those crackers and media-types hijacked the term, until only bad images are conjured up :-( I always wanted to be a hacker, but I'm only a old hack. :-D Michael CP Blog [^]
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This reminds me of all those essays in pop magazines trying to identify who really is "hip". Or who is a real "punk" vs a "poseur". It all usually boils down to: 1. Those who are, are. 2. Those who think they are, aren't. 3. Those who are, are great. 4. Those who aren't are as sheep to those who are. 5. Be very nice to those who are, because they are as gold. Actually, I think the prototypes of these articles are medieval Catholic discussions over who is or isn't a saint. And those are presumably predated by discussions of who is(n't) a prophet, a seer, a magician, a warrior, a hero... The exclusivity of the criteria and the subjectivity of final judgement make such articles irrefutable, provided the author him/herself possesses enough cultural currency to cow the masses. And millions pore over them, getting little stabs of excitement when they see elements that overlap with themselves, feeling a brief moment of disappointment or humor when they see something that they are not. Why do I take exception to this whole business? Because it's a very sneaky rhetorical method for putting across a very specific authorial agenda. If you remove the author's mystical claptrap about the ineffible qualities of a "true hacker", you see that he: 1. Doesn't like Java because it's popular. 2. Likes Python. 3. Likes open source software. 4. LOVES Perl. In a nutshell, he's taking his own opinions (and, to be fair, observations) and putting them in the mouths of these mystical, unidentifiable "hackers" who cannot be argued with because they are essentially smarter than you, the reader. You, the reader, cannot argue with those opinions because they are held by the "hackers", who are smarter than you. If you think you are a hacker and therefore have the right to argue, you really don't, because if you think you're a hacker you aren't :). So if you argue that Java is, in fact, a good language, or that you can creatively program on a Windows NT platform, you aren't arguing against Paul Graham, a mere mortal--you are, in fact, arguing against the uberclass of "hackers" he has set up. But no one but Paul Graham can say what the opinions of those hackers are, because if any self-described "hackers" come forward and say that Java IS a good language, they are inherently wrong because they violate the "a self-described hacker is not a hacker" rule. Of course, the way to trump Paul Graham is to say that you know hackers too, and that they believe X , Y, and Z... So basically it's this huge, convol
Yeah, that's what I felt reading it as well. It would be a great article if he was just a little bit more objective about it and dialed down the "slash dotness". His own article points out that Microsoft really "gets" the mindset of great programmers and I really don't see how anyone could argue against there being a *lot* of great programmers working for Microsoft. If Microsoft can bet termed "evil" or accused of putting out bad software one can almost always trace that back to marketing and business concerns, not strictly technological ones.
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods. - Ambrose Bierce -
This reminds me of all those essays in pop magazines trying to identify who really is "hip". Or who is a real "punk" vs a "poseur". It all usually boils down to: 1. Those who are, are. 2. Those who think they are, aren't. 3. Those who are, are great. 4. Those who aren't are as sheep to those who are. 5. Be very nice to those who are, because they are as gold. Actually, I think the prototypes of these articles are medieval Catholic discussions over who is or isn't a saint. And those are presumably predated by discussions of who is(n't) a prophet, a seer, a magician, a warrior, a hero... The exclusivity of the criteria and the subjectivity of final judgement make such articles irrefutable, provided the author him/herself possesses enough cultural currency to cow the masses. And millions pore over them, getting little stabs of excitement when they see elements that overlap with themselves, feeling a brief moment of disappointment or humor when they see something that they are not. Why do I take exception to this whole business? Because it's a very sneaky rhetorical method for putting across a very specific authorial agenda. If you remove the author's mystical claptrap about the ineffible qualities of a "true hacker", you see that he: 1. Doesn't like Java because it's popular. 2. Likes Python. 3. Likes open source software. 4. LOVES Perl. In a nutshell, he's taking his own opinions (and, to be fair, observations) and putting them in the mouths of these mystical, unidentifiable "hackers" who cannot be argued with because they are essentially smarter than you, the reader. You, the reader, cannot argue with those opinions because they are held by the "hackers", who are smarter than you. If you think you are a hacker and therefore have the right to argue, you really don't, because if you think you're a hacker you aren't :). So if you argue that Java is, in fact, a good language, or that you can creatively program on a Windows NT platform, you aren't arguing against Paul Graham, a mere mortal--you are, in fact, arguing against the uberclass of "hackers" he has set up. But no one but Paul Graham can say what the opinions of those hackers are, because if any self-described "hackers" come forward and say that Java IS a good language, they are inherently wrong because they violate the "a self-described hacker is not a hacker" rule. Of course, the way to trump Paul Graham is to say that you know hackers too, and that they believe X , Y, and Z... So basically it's this huge, convol
Mmm good one :) But where you say that Graham doesn't like Java becuase it's popular... ...from reading his book that's not quite what he thinks. In fact, he doesn't mention that as a bad thing at all. Almost his only problem with Java is that it is at the end of a branch on the evolutionary programming tree.