How To Become A Hacker
catb.org
How To Become A Hacker
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#2Does he have an entry on how to become an insufferable blow-hard?
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#3"No problem should ever have to be solved twice."
I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to progress.
As an example, take the browser wars. As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution
"What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels."
If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#4What is up with the tooltips on that page? They are almost too distracting for me to read the text. I had to use the fabulous viewtext.org to keep sane.
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#5Does he have an entry on how to become an insufferable blow-hard?
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#6Possibly the best thing ever said on the topic of this essay is from the infamous Dabblers and Blowhards post:
----
I blame Eric Raymond and to a lesser extent Dave Winer for bringing this kind of schlock writing onto the Internet. Raymond is the original perpetrator of the "what is a hacker?" essay, in which you quickly begin to understand that a hacker is someone who resembles Eric Raymond. [...] The whole genre reminds me of the the wooly business books one comes across at airports ("Management secrets of Gengis Khan", the "Lexus and the Olive Tree") that milk a bad analogy for two hundred pages to arrive at the conclusion that people just like the author are pretty great.
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#7Does he have an entry on how to become an insufferable blow-hard?
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#8Re: How To Become A Hacker
#9"No problem should ever have to be solved twice." I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to progress. As an example, take the browser wars. As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution "What…
> I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which
> there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition
> (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to
> progress
You know, he does make the point that it is OK to pursue a superior solution:
Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better.
Re: How To Become A Hacker
#10"No problem should ever have to be solved twice." I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to progress. As an example, take the browser wars. As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution "What…
> I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which > there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition > (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to > progress You know, he does make the point that it is OK to pursue a superior solution: Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is o…
If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification:
"What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels."
If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")