Did it ever existed to begin with? The myth begun with "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" from Steven Levy in 1984, and it was mainly propaganda.
Is true hacking dead? What we lost
31–40 of 194 posts
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#32There was a time when I used to fret that the era of tinkering was coming to an end. Crypto was going to be illegal, they were going to put DRM on speakers, and our computers are designed to be completely locked down to the degree that you can't even add more RAM to a MacBook Pro. However, I think that the rise of Linux, Raspberry Pi and Arduino, OSS and Github and massive package repos for every language, Adafruit,…
Hacking is just interesting only if you are not following any "tutorial". Today you can run an embedded linux under 10 minutes with less that 20 bucks with a RPI by reading some tutorial or watching a youtube video. What's the fun about that?
I remember too hacking my commodore and the only help I had was just a book in a strange language (english in my case) and my dad (he was into 8086 at that time) when I was a kid. Today everyone pretends there should be step-by-step guides on how to do everything.
The most similar thing to that hacking feeling I get in the present is implementing some unknown HW component (i.e. a sensor, I2C device, microcontroller) that there is no source code or help for it (of course, when doing it for fun and not work). When the thing starts to work, there is a very little spark similar to those felt when I was a kid.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not. Going fast is revered, breaking things is not. And why is going fast so important? It is because an individual can't accomplish much when going slow. Why are individual works important? Because individuals do things that would never get funding, they make decisions…
It is entirely possible to do something slow and well and still do it alone and esentially without funding. As a film maker this is one of the things I love about writing and programming: there is no money needed only your time (which of course also costs you something). But it is perfectly possible to sit alone in your chamber and write a great piece of software that competes with the best out there. Try doing that…
> It is entirely possible to do something slow and well and still do it alone and essentially without funding.
Like?
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#34We’re still here. More than ever actually. There’s just more noise.
Do any communities still exist?
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not. Going fast is revered, breaking things is not. And why is going fast so important? It is because an individual can't accomplish much when going slow. Why are individual works important? Because individuals do things that would never get funding, they make decisions…
It is entirely possible to do something slow and well and still do it alone and esentially without funding. As a film maker this is one of the things I love about writing and programming: there is no money needed only your time (which of course also costs you something). But it is perfectly possible to sit alone in your chamber and write a great piece of software that competes with the best out there. Try doing that…
Quick hacks can often compete with the best out there precisely for the reasons I mentioned, git is a good example. Then of course when something becomes big it stops being a quick hack and starts having a huge maintenance team, but it was still a quick hack in the beginning.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#36I don't think true hacking is dead, its just lost in a sea of non-hacking. The number of students who could write code in my high school of 2000 was perhaps 35. Those 35 were amazing because they had to work to get access to a computer, so we had already eliminated everyone who was just "oh that's too hard". Of the 35 perhaps a dozen kept at it beyond one class in BASIC. In my daughter's similarly sized highschool 40…
An astonishing thing happened when we finally made it possible for everyone in the world to tell a computer what to do: We discovered nobody knows what they want the computer to do!
We were surprised (if also for other reasons) because we confused the product with the means, or to paraphrase Feynman, hacking is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#37Other people have already commented on the core message. I have a nitpick instead:
> That's probably why we still have textual source (great for git and merging) over more expressive formats or even the old idea of serializing the entire state of a VM (again lisp, smalltalk) which sacrifices merging entirely to make hotpatching (dynamic software updates) trivial.
Good. Not being able to merge squarely belongs in the past, where everyone had access to only one machine. I'm incredibly thankful that I can merge the half-finished work on my desktop from last evening with the patches that I just pushed from my notebook while in the train.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#38Graduated high school a couple years ago. Plenty of people coded, but I had only had one friend that actually was interested in doing more with computers. We found some pretty cool stuff on the school network, and ways to screw with our less tech-savvy friends. It even cost me a trip to the principal's office one time, due to my stupidity and inexperience.
I guess I'm not part of the right forums or boards, but I just haven't been able to find other people with that same kind of passion. I know I could and should just get started by myself, but I'm the type of person that just loses motivation and the will to keep working if I dont have someone else by my side. And I go to a UC. Sure plenty of people know a bit of linux and networking, but how many people actually want to go past their classes and actually take the time to research and learn more? It's hard to find those people. As a result, I'm moving away from hacking into more normal spaces like appdev and web stuff. Its definitely not as exciting, and I dont think I'll ever again feel that thrill of being called to the principal's office for hacking.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#39Yes. It’s dead. Killed by money.
Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost
#40Hackers were like the hotrodders before. Here's a thing. Make it work. Make it faster. Improve it. Change it. Know how it works. Master it. I don't think its died. Its more likely morphed into something you don't recognise because its always been dynamic and now you're attempting to apply a static definition. Then you get frustrated or lament "its not the same as in the good old days". But the reality is that people…
> Make it work. Make it faster.
This is not hacking.