The point about text editors is absurd. One because comparing TextMate to vim or emacs is almost apples and oranges. And secondly because writing something Java without completions is going to be horrendously slow just because of all the arcane function and property names.
Core competencies of great hackers
51–60 of 116 posts
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist." The implication here is completely in the negative. Further, it's like saying "If you want to be a hacker, use English measuring units because we've never any met any great hackers who use the metric system." Just because a bunch of rails hackers don't use an IDE doesn't imply the contrapositive.
I hear they exist, I've just never met them. That could be my sampling bias. None of the people around me relying on IDEs are great hackers. Instead of arguing about what might have been implied in what I wrote, I'd rather you introduced me to people you consider great hackers that use an IDE. Know any?
The people who I work with whom I regard as great hackers work almost exclusively in the real time embedded space (industrial automation systems) and don't have web notoriety.
Slightly more prominent individuals could include Ted Neward (http://blogs.tedneward.com), Joe Duffy (http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/default.aspx), James Devlin(http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working...), and Dustin Campbell (http://diditwith.net)
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#53Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
I can understand the "that's not the bottleneck" argument. But the problem with going too far down that road is this: Imagine if you had to wait one second for your keyboard to respond to any key you type (and one second between keystrokes). You could still produce awesome code and be a great hacker, but can you look me in the proverbial eye and tell me that this would not handicap you in some way? Think about the commands you type really quickly on the command line without a second thought. Think of the messages you send off to friends really quickly.
Generalize this to the experience of using the Internet. Since great entrepreneurs are relentlessly resourceful, they can make great things come to pass using a 56k dialup connection, but I'm sure you wouldn't want a connection as slow as that. Why? If you want to think of it in terms of the argument you made above, then it's obvious that the bandwidth is unimportant because your connection is idle for the bulk of the time you spend using the Web.
The important thing is not thinking of this as a comparison between how much time you spend typing versus thinking. It's more about maximizing the responsiveness between you and your computer. The less friction there is during these small bursts of interaction, the better.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#54Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
Typing speed is important for the reason the article mentions -- micro-interruptions. Most of the time, you just have to type a few words, and the editor will complete the rest for you. Fine. But a lot of the time, you are typing a symbol for the first time, and autocompletion doesn't really help. It breaks your flow if you can't type this symbol quickly and correctly the first time. (It is also worth pointing out th…
The dismissive attitude of "programming doesn't require typing skills" is extremely naive.
Shrug... Well I say that because that's my experience. I've never really been concerned with micro-interruptions. I guess I'm surprised this bothers people so much (It's the macro interruptions that hurt me more). I've been in situations where I've been unable to type (or type quickly). I learnt and grew as a coder more in those times that any other - so a different experience really.
So, yeah, typing is great. It's a very handy skill to have. It probably helps a coder a lot, and it's a good thing to know. However, I don't think it makes you a better coder.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#55Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
Wish I could give the parent more mods... I personally touch-type maybe 50 wpm but that's for documentation, not code. If you are attempting to create code at the speed that you type, you are insane ... or you will be soon, when you try to debug it. If someone was lucky enough to think faster than they could type, they'd be able to think twice before they added more code to a program - a good thing! Just think. Is wp…
See my comment above. I spend a lot of time typing, even though I reuse a lot of code. (I write a lot of code: http://github.com/jrockway)
It's nice to think that code types itself, but it doesn't. If you have no ideas, then it doesn't matter how fast you can express them as code. If you have a lot of ideas, though, you don't want to wait for your fingers to slowly tell them to the computer. You want the computer to know quickly, so you can move on to the next task. That's why typing is important. There is no brain/computer interface yet, so you have to do it with your hands and the keyboard. Suboptimal, but them's the breaks.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because I don't think typing is the most basic tool - It's abstract thought.
I think your use of the word "basic" is amusing. I would agree that the most important tool is abstract thought, but it is not the most basic.
Depends on your definition of basic - can use it to mean "simple", but it's also used to describe something fundamental, irreducible or essential.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#57In fact you could condense all of these into "know your tools extremely well", and you can take it further to "optimize yourself/your environment relentlessly".
I've known great hackers who used Eclipse, sam, acme, Brief, UltraEdit and everything under the sun.
Working with someone who doesn't know their chosen tools (people who use menus to work their editor, hand edit things instead of using sed/awk/perl, etc) is extremely painful, and seeing someone profess to use a tool but not operate it well is a huge warning sign to me. Same with slow typists: pair programming with such sucks.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#58Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
There are at least two people who I'd dub "great hackers" who type essentially, two fingered. One of them suffers from horrible RSI (but, at one point, had the company hire someone to be their hands). The other didn't grow up around computers/type writers (growing up in the 1940s/1950s in Soviet Union), didn't really heavily program until after graduate school and for the first decade mostly programmed by writing cod…
Gah - when I was out of school, they could have paid me minimum wage and I'd be thrilled to take a job to be a great hacker's "hands." I can't imagine many better ways to see a master work.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#59This should just be titled "Tools used by people with great hacker egos but may or may not actually be great hackers", because these are not predictors of great hackers.
Re: Core competencies of great hackers
#60So if I learn these things, will I miraculously be transformed into a great hacker? Or will I have wasted my time, while others spent the same time launching several profitable web sites with Ruby on Rails?