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My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

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Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#111

Post by swix »

count wrote: post #62
generalk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Sometimes. A hacker writing a quickie web server for the experience of doing so is laudable. This applies to lots of types of projects: toy OSes, social networking protocols, web frameworks, what have you. Exploration is fun, and key to the hacker spirit. The difficulty comes from knowing the limitations of your skills. I got my web programming chops by reading a bunch of PHP tutorials back in 1998 and…

Here, here! Learning someething, and selling (for money, or otherwise) the not-acceptable-for-use side effect of your learning something as a 'finished' product can be dangerous to the end customer. Not being able to skateboard well means you're going to fall and bust your knees or elbows or face. It's dangerous to you, and potentially comedic to your compatriots. Publishing a website full of XSS/SQLI problems and st…

You probably have one of the most poisonous perspectives one can have in this type of thing, this is exactly why the world sucks. There _NEVER_ is a reason to give "harsh" feedback, go read some kevin pollak or study psychology, humans are not "dogs" giving harsh or stupid feedback wont change the broken product.

Offer your help, "Holy shit dude you have a XSS/SQLI in there, lets fix that up before you get in trouble".

You are probably one of those people that wouldn't help someone on the edge of a roof trying to commit suicide. Just sayin.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#114

Post by lloeki »

This seems like someone just discovered that once you consider a large enough group of people, a bunch of them happen to be narrow-minded people thinking they know The Truth and feel they have a Mission to teach Gospel. The best thing to do is to actually ignore them lest one risks engaging into void arguments. Once you learn to get over the empty side of the Internet you discover that you can also find a bunch of open-minded, constructive people (of which hackers are - by the idealistic definition - a subset).

Trains can be late and one can be quite vocal about that, but few talk about those that are actually on time.

Also, http://xkcd.com/386/

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#115

Post by danenania »

count wrote: post #62
generalk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Sometimes. A hacker writing a quickie web server for the experience of doing so is laudable. This applies to lots of types of projects: toy OSes, social networking protocols, web frameworks, what have you. Exploration is fun, and key to the hacker spirit. The difficulty comes from knowing the limitations of your skills. I got my web programming chops by reading a bunch of PHP tutorials back in 1998 and…

Here, here! Learning someething, and selling (for money, or otherwise) the not-acceptable-for-use side effect of your learning something as a 'finished' product can be dangerous to the end customer. Not being able to skateboard well means you're going to fall and bust your knees or elbows or face. It's dangerous to you, and potentially comedic to your compatriots. Publishing a website full of XSS/SQLI problems and st…

Not to diminish the importance of doing good work, but the reality is that knowledge and expertise are part of a continuum and even well-respected experts can easily make mistakes. If you're trying to make a living, you have to attempt to sell yourself at whatever level you're at, then work to keep improving. It's the customer's responsibility to do due diligence and discover potentially critical gaps in expertise, not the provider's to trumpet his/her own weaknesses. This is just the nature of a marketplace.

The hacker who postures a bit in order to get a job he isn't truly suited for, but works hard to get up to speed and does his best, will be much better off in the long run than a hacker who declines the project, even if it leads to problems for the buyer later on. There's only so much you can learn without jumping in the deep end, but in order to get that chance, you often need to give the impression you've been swimming in the deep end for years. That's how the world works.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#116

Post by dexen »

ScottBurson wrote: post #102
dexen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each of the `Excellent xxx' response you give differs in two important hitches from the `Insecure xxx': 1) it requires much common context, understanding, experience. Everybody will understand a ``this sucks'' response, regardless of the reasoning behind it being clear. Understanding a, and building better solution on, an involved response requires common understanding, common experience, between the parties of commu…

> What the heck is a 4/2 split? OT, but in case you're actually wondering, it refers to the number of cards of a given suit held by each of the defenders. In bridge, there are four players, conventionally called North, East, South, and West; after the auction, one player becomes declarer; let's say that's South. In this case, North, across the table, is dummy, and East and West, on either side, are defenders. Dummy's…

Thanks, now I understand why I should stick to Texas hold 'em for now ;-)

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#117

Post by dkarl »

kstenerud wrote: post #89
dkarl wrote: post #44

What would we think of an American who walked into an Egyptian coffeehouse or a Japanese board room and interpreted all the behavior he saw there as if he were seeing it in a church in Iowa? It's fine to demand that geeks develop some social sophistication, but it's also fine to expect that non-geeks will have enough social sophistication not to rush to judgment about behavior in an unfamiliar cultural context. Cultu…

There's a huge difference between "You're wrong and here's why", and "You did X??? What are you, stupid? You suck and you should just gtfo because you'll never amount to anything. You'd be so fired if you worked in my company. Bullet. Brain. Make the connection." Both are uncompromising. Only one is civil.

I think people tend to hear the latter when geeks say the former, because non-geeks usually aren't so direct.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#118

Post by derleth »

nhangen wrote: post #87
Alex3917 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then there are the people who are dicks and want to crush people who they disagree with." The problem is that when people start mouthing off about factual issues they don't know anything about they can cause a lot of damage, so crushing them is often a necessity. When you're in a situation where there is a lot of potential for damage and the other person isn't willing to have an intellectually honest debate about th…

That comment: "The problem is that when people start mouthing off about factual issues they don't know anything about they can cause a lot of damage, so crushing them is often a necessity." Is exactly the type of thing that comes from the hive mind, and is why it's impossible to be a dissenter. It's usually "you don't know what you are talking about," followed by bashing until the person takes their ball and goes hom…

> It's usually "you don't know what you are talking about," followed by bashing until the person takes their ball and goes home.

I agree that if it's just that kind of content-free junk, it's pointless.

However, if the beatdown comes with a factual and logical refutation of the idiot's points, or at least a link to a site that has such a refutation, then it performs the inestimable service of educating the lurkers.

For example, let's say we had an anti-vaccinationist come here and start spreading lies about vaccines. We would, rightly, be dismayed at such utter lunacy at work in our forum, and we would (hopefully) post multiple refutations of that dangerous nonsense. Ideally, the lunatic would find that we are not amenable to that kind of idiocy and would leave, sadly uneducated (most likely) but at least doing less damage. The real benefit to such actions may come months later, when someone unsure of the facts about vaccines discovers a dead thread that has all of this wonderful information we used to refute the idiot.

(And, heck, we might even convince the anti-vaxxer. It could happen.)

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#119

Post by zasz »

dexen wrote: post #22
agentultra wrote: post #11

It's true. I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," or "don't bother doing it yourself, you'll just screw it up -- someone has probably done it already and did it better than you could." This happens most often at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship. The business advice is that it's cheaper to buy it than build it. The engineer's perspective is…

There is reinventing the wheel and reinventing the wheel. It's cute when a person, learning as she goes, comes up with something that's been already invented. Only goes to show she understands the field. [1] It's unbelievably irritating when something that was widely implemented 10 or 20 or 30 years ago (and then even improved significantly) is now asserted as the next big thing. C'mon, be serious -_-' [2] [1] a nice…

For [2]--NoSQL.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#120

Post by uptown »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #5
dools wrote: post #2

Yep, I agree entirely. Stop being such sanctimonious fuckwits.

If "fuckwit" adds anything to your comment, can you explain what that is?

I'm guessing the sentence would look kinda funny with a random "s" following the word sanctimonious.
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