I wanted to resolve the 'Einstein' or 'Cabins' puzzle so I got an Aim65. I went through Pet, CPM, bubble memory, Forth, Dr Jobs, Turbo C, Smalltalk and was very near to a solution with microProlog (it came as an 8"floppy). Then Winston and Mellish ruined it for me. It's done even better now with amb and monads but life has never been quite the same.
What sparked your inner hacker?
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#12I object to the overuse of the word "hacker". You're all like a bunch of freshman coeds in English class talking about the day they became poets.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#13I object to the overuse of the word "hacker". You're all like a bunch of freshman coeds in English class talking about the day they became poets.
How would you define it? My definition of a hacker is someone who creatively and safely overcomes or circumvents limitations and enjoys the challenge.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#14Geocities...God rest their souls...
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#15I object to the overuse of the word "hacker". You're all like a bunch of freshman coeds in English class talking about the day they became poets.
How would you define it? My definition of a hacker is someone who creatively and safely overcomes or circumvents limitations and enjoys the challenge.
Roughly, someone who is unquestionably a hacker has to identify you as such. It's clearly a cultural thing, and that defies objective measurement.
http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
the CTO couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have had to use NT voluntarily, multiple times, and I couldn't imagine a great hacker doing that
I think pg sometimes types faster than he thinks. The same person who designed NT designed VMS. Richard Stallman (iirc) wanted to use VMS instead of Unix as a basis when he started GNU but couldn't for some reason. At bottom, there is nothing wrong with NT, aside from open-source nonsense (hack the kernel lately? No?). Is there anything preventing great work on Windows? No, no, no. And I would suggest that John Carmack is a better coder than all of you put together, but since he's willingly used NT, he's evidentally no great hacker. Hence, it is more culture- than technology- or product-based.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#16I always thought about hacking as breaking into other peoples computers.
It had to be one of these two:
the AOL Homepage maker(the wysiwyg) or
the homestead pages(ex:whateveryouwant.homestead.com).
I made a homestead page about the origin of mankind for my History class in the 7th grade. This made me think that almost anything could be done on the web, and it has become a reality since then.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#17Wow, do I feel old.
Using the DOS command line with my Dad's Compaq luggable with dual 5-1/4" floppies, baby!
The first true coding that I did was making a graphics program in basic. I thought it looked like Star Wars hyperspace scene. No one else agreed with me, though.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#18I read a lot of science-fiction as a kid. For me and my brother computers were just as fascinating (and unattainable) as space travel and aliens. When it actually became possible for ordinary people to buy a computer (the ZX81!), of course we saved up for it. When we got the computer, of course we had to learn how to program it, since it didn't have any software.
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#19Initially? Learning Basic from a really motivated teacher who said in 20 years that everyone would need to know at least basic programming since everyone would be working on a computer for their job. He wasn't that far off.
What crushed my inner hacker? University computer science where everything was very strict and restraining, or perhaps it was my focus.
What re-sparked it? Lisp briefly for inspiring me to code in a better way. Then Python :)
Re: What sparked your inner hacker?
#20I always liked taking things apart, putting things together, and putting things together to make them do things they weren't originally intended to do. I liked to draw, paint, make stuff.
When I discovered programming, I saw it as the much the same thing, only better; being digital, you have fewer arbitrary constraints than the Real World. Imagination was the only real limit.
Software is opinionated reality, the ultimate playground and toy chest. I'm still surprised that more people don't find it intrinsically fascinating. Go figure. :)