Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

dourish.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 25 posts

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#11

Post by joezydeco »

bcantrill wrote: post #8
mseepgood wrote: post #3

There are people who haven't heard of the Jargon File?

A part of me has this initial reaction as well: "Who has not heard of the Jargon File?!" But then I remember that there was a time once (long ago now) when I hadn't heard of it either -- and I remember my own delight in discovering and inhaling it. At the risk of sounding patronizing, discovering the Jargon File is practically a rite of passage for nerdy youth. So to anyone reading the Jargon File for the first time:…

Same here - I discovered it in 1991 by buying the paperback edition from MIT Press. I still thumb through it from time to time (I'd say it's good bathroom reading but I don't want my wife to flag it).

It's a wonderful pre-Internet artifact that I love having. I really don't care about updates or active-vs-printed stuff.

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#14

Post by alan_cx »

nwj wrote: post #7
lmm wrote: post #5

Meh. A record that doesn't evolve is dead; ESR gets a lot of criticism for his stewardship but I'll take a Jargon File that updates over one that doesn't any day

I disagree. Yes, this record is out of date and that limits its utility today as a decoding tool. However, its historical value is high because it is out of date. I found it interesting to go through it and look at which usages had survived and which hadn't.

Exactly. Also, it is or should be obvious that its an historical artefact, and there for has important value, and not seen as something useful today. Although, it could be.

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#15

Post by winestock »

jsqr wrote: post #9
lmm wrote: post #5

Meh. A record that doesn't evolve is dead; ESR gets a lot of criticism for his stewardship but I'll take a Jargon File that updates over one that doesn't any day

The site maintainer for the 1988 verion, Paul Dourish, gives a counterargument in his preface ('...Unfortunately, in the process, [Raymond] essentially destroyed what held it together, in various ways: first, by changing its emphasis from Lisp-based to UNIX-based (blithely ignoring the distinctly anti-UNIX aspects of the LISP culture celebrated in the original); second, by watering down what was otherwise the fairly…

Here is the archive for the Unix Hater's mailing list: http://www.mindspring.com/~blackhart/

Download it and, in the first half of the (long) archive, you will find the users raising holy hell at Eric S. Raymond for what he was doing to the Jargon File at the time.

Raymond had changed the anti-Unix jokes, substituting MS-DOS for Unix in each case. The users of the mailing list would have been happy with Raymond coming up with original anti-Microsoft jokes, but were justifiably angry at Raymond for re-writing history.

I don't have quite as bad an opinion of Eric S. Raymond as do some people around here. In particular, his idea of Kafka trapping is insightful ( http://0-esr.ibiblio.org.librus.hccs.edu/?p=2122 ). I do note the irony of a libertarian who gripes at the distortions of the mainstream media having done a bit of media distortion of his own.

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#16

Post by hakaaaaak »

The peculiar nouns "-osity" thing was not originally a hacker thing. Discounting other unnecessary word endings being introduced to the public at large by the Fonz in Happy Days when he continually added the "-omundo" to the end of things, the "-osity" type of adjective -> noun mutilation may have been picked up from surfer/Cali talk, introduced into the mainstream by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Spicoli) and later by Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Pauli Shore (on MTV and then in really bad movies).

By the same token terms like "barf" and "bogus" were just popular terms in the very early 80s because of all of the California influence.

Of all of these, the ones that look most familiar for the time that really have little to do with popular culture of the time were: BITBLT (just because I remember seeing it and thought "what the hell"), crash (mid to later 80s when used the first Macs), and down (which wasn't really used much until the 90s, because when you couldn't connect to a BBS or Compuserve, etc. - which almost was never the case to my memory - you just couldn't connect, and prior to modems there was no connection- just cassette tapes and eventually floppies - and no I did not have a card machine :) and I didn't see a minicomputer with a huge-ass 8 inch floppy until my first network admin job in the 90s).

Basically, the majority of this is "bogus". ;)

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#18

Post by kennedysgarage »

Always interested to see what domains are available in any old dictionary. I didn't see anything that I cared for, have at it:

chinenual.com

connectorconspiracy.com

doprotocol.com

fenceposterror.com

glasstty.com

hardwarily.com

linestarve.com

munchingsquares.com

pessimizingcompiler.com

realworldthe.com

rightthingthe.com

shiftleftrightlogical.com

smokingclover.com

softwarerot.com

waterbottlesoccer.com

yu-shiangwholefish.com

Re: The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)

#19

Post by bikenaga »

hakaaaaak wrote: post #16

The peculiar nouns "-osity" thing was not originally a hacker thing. Discounting other unnecessary word endings being introduced to the public at large by the Fonz in Happy Days when he continually added the "-omundo" to the end of things, the "-osity" type of adjective -> noun mutilation may have been picked up from surfer/Cali talk, introduced into the mainstream by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Spic…

"crash" and "down" go back further than that. I'm looking at my copy of HoToGAMIT ("How to Get Around MIT") from 1972. In the Appendix there is a Lexicon of MIT Words, Phrases, Acronyms. The entry for "crash": "(1) To sleep in a place where one has not paid rent, such as a friend's apartment. (2) To join a party without being invited. (3) To cease functioning, as in a computer system."

And the entry for "down": "(1) Feeling depressed. Said of a person. (2) Non-working, gronked. Said of a machine."

The Lexicon occupies pages 222-232, so it isn't very long, and most of the entries are MIT-specific (such as acronyms for organizations). But there are some entries (like the one for "hack") which occur in the Hacker's Dictionary.

HoToGAMIT was published by the Tech Community Association, and was distributed to incoming freshmen.

Post reply on HN