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Is true hacking dead? What we lost

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Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#41

Post by eeZah7Ux »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #18

Three things: 1. 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. 2. How come that someone thinks of himself/herself that he/she has the right to say who is a "true hacker" and who is not. 3. AND THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX5Xy3a2uJU Thank you Jayson.

> why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified

This is not hacking in the proper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto ) sense.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#42

Post by javajosh »

If you define hacking as gaining access to scarce compute resources, then yes, hacking is dead because compute scarcity is dead.

If you define hacking as controlling your computer hardware at the lowest level, then hacking is dead because no-one wants to write device drivers.

If you define hacking as *making the lights blink in interesting ways"[1] then hacking is incredibly, richly, and totally alive! You can make the lights blink in so many interesting ways!

To sum up, that's one really good change, one somewhat unfortunate but understandable change, and another really incredibly good change. (BTW I don't think the OP's point about complex OSS really fits in this particular essay - minimalism is important topic and deserves it's own essay, but it's not related to hacking, IMHO).

[1] I don't recall where I read this, but Feynman wrote about being involved with the Manhattan project, with the simulations they were trying to run on very early, primitive computers, and how one or two scientists put on that part of the project had to be replaced because they got too fascinated with the "blinking lights" to get any work done. I find this anecdote very easy to believe.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#43

Post by Cougher »

Animats wrote: post #25
peteforde wrote: post #16

There 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,…

the author wasn't talking about hacking but recreating the exact same conditions that existed when he was a young person... That sums up the article. Kids can do far more today than in the Commodore 64 era. On the other hand, the field is much bigger, so they won't be doing the same thing as their local friends. But there will be someone on the web doing something similar to talk to.

It reminds me of one of the reasons why I stopped using Getoffmylawnbook: far too many of my friends were using it to complain about "kids today". They were angry and indignant about things like kids being allowed to use calculators in math class and not enough kids knowing how to drive a car with a manual transmission. It's like there's this arbitrary "right point" at which kids are supposed to start from and it's coincidentally the same as the point where we started from.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#44

Post by _nalply »

Hacking has changed.

I tinker with a homegrown family information and media center with a dis-used Gigabyte BRIX behind an old flat screen running Linux and chromium-browser in kiosk mode. I bought a NES style USB gamepad and use it to make things show. It's a hobby, but it turned out to be nice.

For me that's hacking.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#45

Post by AllasAskBar »

blihp wrote: post #22
japhyr wrote: post #13

It feels like the word "hacking" is losing more and more meaning over time. In the beginning it was a word only people heavily into computers used. Then around the time of War Games it became a more commonly-known word, and connotated breaking in. Over the last couple decades more people became aware that hacking sometimes refers to building technical projects. But it still has a heavy connotation of breaking into a…

I don't think its lost meaning as much as it has a completely different meaning than it used to. It seems pretty common when something goes mainstream, as computing has, for original definitions to be tossed aside while the terms get re-appropriated by/for a more mainstream audience. This happens all the time in other parts of culture whether music, fashion or whatever. So I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that…

Yet if you are a conservative you believe that the original meaning is the actual meaning. The uneducated masses of plebs merely utters a word, they do not use it.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#47

Post by krapp »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #18

Three things: 1. 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. 2. How come that someone thinks of himself/herself that he/she has the right to say who is a "true hacker" and who is not. 3. AND THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX5Xy3a2uJU Thank you Jayson.

>1. 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.

The former represents the philosophy of startup culture. "Move fast and break things" is a Facebook motto. You're on a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC company, so connect the dots.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#48

Post by heisenbit »

atq2119 wrote: post #5

I've never understood the appeal of hot-patching and full process image save and restore. Yes, this technology is neat for some use cases, but as a fundamental way of computing it's broken, because it throws reproducibility out of the window. Reproducibility is everything in complex systems, and being able to reset and start fresh is powerful. Evolution figured that out as well. It's why basically all species propaga…

As soon as one works on a non-trivial piece of software and has a team >2 SCM becomes important. There was one SCM system for PP Smalltalk if memory serves right called Envy but it was quite expensive. But even more important than SCM is a module/library eco system. We can’t trade without reproducibility. Without it we are destined to re-invent the wheel.

There is value in reinventing wheel - it is entertaining and stress free - as it does not matter for anyone but yourself.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#49

Post by bencollier49 »

adrianN wrote: post #17
tus88 wrote: post #8

> The sad and inspiring story of TempleOS, a.k.a. what the Raspberry Pi should have been. Eh?

TempleOS is a really cool system to hack. You should watch some of the live coding videos the author did. It's really much more of a tinkerer's system than the stock Linux that runs on most Pis.

More people should use RISC OS with the Pi.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#50

Post by atoav »

Avamander wrote: post #33
atoav wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Horizon EDA was started by a guy who didn’t want to use a closed source EDA tool like Altium for his final university electronics project and wasn’t happy with KiCAD.

He planned it very carefully (so I wouldn’t call it a hack) and years after it is still going without any funding. This isn’t that uncommon in open source IMO.

Of course this is not a value judgement, there are quick hacks that work perfectly well and slower more planned out projects that never work at all — each aproach has it’s pros and cons.

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