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How To Become A Hacker

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Re: How To Become A Hacker

#11

Post by mindcrime »

niggler wrote: post #10
mindcrime wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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")

If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification:

Of course I read all of your response. The second part seems, to me, to be addressing a different issue altogether. You claim to strongly disagree with "no problem should be solved twice" but your statement about why you disagree jibes with what ESR himself said. I'm not sure what it is you disagree with him about in the general sense.

The second part, sure, you are saying that patent enforcement can result in better solutions due to the "necessity being the mother of invention" factor, whereas Raymond completely objects to "artificial barriers". But that's just a detail, surely?

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#13

Post by mindcrime »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #6

Possibly 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 re…

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

Sounds like a pretty weak criticism to me. We all reflect our own biases and opinions in our writings, surely? If pg wrote "how to be a hacker" wouldn't you wind up with something suggesting that hackers should be like pg? If rtm wrote "how to be a hacker" do you think it wouldn't wind up reflecting a bias towards his mindsets and attitudes? If onan_barbarian wrote "how to be a hacker" would it not create an argument for hackers being much like onan_barbarian?

If esr's essay is factually incorrect or misleading or damaging in some fashion, then I'd encourage anyone to criticize it for that, rather than just slamming the man for writing it.

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#14

Post by onan_barbarian »

mindcrime wrote: post #13
onan_barbarian wrote: post #6

Possibly 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 re…

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 Sounds like a pretty weak criticism to me. We all reflect our own biases and opinions in our writings, surely? If pg wrote "how to be a hacke…

I suspect you're missing his point, possibly wilfully. Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, his criticism is that the content of the "how to be a hacker" essay in question is almost nothing more than thinly veiled self-description.

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#15

Post by mindcrime »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #14
mindcrime wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Sounds like a pretty weak criticism to me. We all reflect our own biases and opinions in our writings, surely? If pg wrote "how to be a hacke…

I suspect you're missing his point, possibly wilfully. Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, his criticism is that the content of the "how to be a hacker" essay in question is almost nothing more than thinly veiled self-description.

I suspect you're missing his point

No, I get the point, I just saying he's wrong.

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#16

Post by rhizome »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #6

Possibly 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 re…

Nietzsche said the meaning of a thing is a function of power rather than truth. If someone had written something better and with similar exposure, people would give that assessment more authority.

Books and essays like "Management secrets of Gengis Khan" are an attempt at invoking this kind of power, that the writer is both knowledgeable enough and the topic is relevant enough to the times in which it appears to hold sway in some way (if only for book sales, natch). If nobody cares who the "Gengis Khan" author is and their way of describing what they're talking about reaches enough people to operate a (sub-) cultural transformation, then the words will therefore have little meaning in the practical sense.

To be sure, writers write from their own subjectivity. This cannot be avoided, so to critique something as having too much of the author in it is a little beyond the pale (pace Derrida). The last century-plus of philosophy and critical exercise have taught us that objectivity doesn't exist (irony intentional); there will always be hints of the writer's mind, biases, and so on. So of course the Jargon File is going to have ESR's fingerprints all over it.

We can talk about how the JF's corpus is weak and riddled with a particular subjectivity, but the simple facts are that it's accessible, easy to digest, and an early description of many, many concepts of the subcultures affiliated with computers. It acquires authority this way, regardless of followers-on and critiques. It's the same problem the Bible and other major religious texts have, but it's also germane to the scope of things like operational best practices, equity allocation, and any other topic where there are schools of thought. The critique raised here is simply another front in a battle between schools. Steven Levy articulated an infinitely more detailed description of hackers, but that has a concomitant inaccessiblity (length), but in my mind equally valid. At the end of the day, we may as well be talking about what band is the most Rock.

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#17

Post by pdonis »

niggler wrote: post #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…

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

Solution to what problem? I would say that the reason browsers have continued to evolve is that all of the existing ones have always sucked; whatever problem past browsers thought they were solving, it wasn't sufficient to solve the real problems users were having with existing browsers.

In short, no problem should ever have to be solved twice; but it does need to be solved once.

Re: How To Become A Hacker

#18

Post by godfried »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #6

Possibly 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 re…

I take it you haven't read Business Secrets of the Pharaohs?
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