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The Fall of Hacking

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: The Fall of Hacking

#101

Post by strlen »

c00p3r wrote: post #92
strlen wrote: post #9

What it boils down to, is that systems programming is no longer a necessity for certain kind of start-ups. The applications most people were writing in Turbo C++ were, in some cases, simpler than CRUD screens in PHP. If anything, PHP is today's Basic: the language that kids start with. There's still however systems programming going on, but in the area of client-server communications (RPC/serialization frameworks), d…

Today's basic is Python. It's even more portable than Java (runs on ARM-based platforms).

I meant in the sense of not promoting structured programming and being many people's first (and only) exposure to programming.

Python very much promotes a certain style of programming (object oriented, with some functional elements). I.e. I can write Basic in PHP (especially after the decision to add goto) but not in Python (which is a benefit; also important to me is the fact I can't write Perl in Python).

Most every managed web hosting provider has PHP integration enabled in their product. If a kid is building a website for their boy scout troop which needs an email feedback or guest book form, they will use PHP.

What's also fascinating is relational databases are a part of the "make a simple web application" stack as well. So you have people with very little exposure to computing using very complex environments with very strong abstraction layers. There's many many years of hard-core hacking that enabled that to happen.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#102

Post by silentOpen »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #41
Locke1689 wrote: post #11

The big ideas of the day is a PHP database CRUD application that displays everyone's colleges and geographical networks, with full names and whose purpose essentially, is a repository for pictures of inebriated hot chicks. Apparently, the new new thing is now this CRUD forum database application that has a character-limit of 120 words per post, but get this, it's written in a really cool language called Ruby on Rails…

Sometimes I get the feeling these days that hacking is becoming too market and business oriented and not about the fun intellectual challenge anymore. There are almost certainly more hackers pursuing intellectual challenges than there have ever been before. What has happened is that the entire rest of the world has arrived on the web, so the intellectuals don't stand out as much. It used to be that more than half the…

This brings up the interesting question of "natural genius".

World population for the last several centuries has exploded. Suppose 500 million people lived in Plato's time and there were 50 "natural geniuses". That means 1 per 10 million. Even disregarding technological or social progress and assuming linear scaling, that implies at least 650 "natural geniuses" today. Where are they? Who are they? The sheer number of most-capable individuals has grown enormously.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#103

Post by silentOpen »

johnnyg wrote: post #40

Hacking is a human activity and as such will follow the same patterns and cultural cycles you would expect. 1. A Space Becomes Wide Open. 2. Legends Are Made Taming The Space. 3. Others Rush In And Establish A Second Tier. 4. Then A Third Tier. 5. Then A Fourth Tier. 6. Then A Fifth Tier. 7. Eventually, A New Crop Decides They Don't Want To be Tier 6 Because They Hate The Output Of Tier 5. 8. A Few Brilliant Minds Fo…

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#104

Post by shard »

Rantenki wrote: post #47
_cbsz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to DEFCON. The signal-to-noise ratio is kind of meh.

Then you were hanging with the wrong people.

If finding the "right" or "wrong" people were so easy, you could go to the circus and find an amazing hacker community. The reason people go to Defcon etc is to be in an environment where the chances of running into the right people are higher. Everyone has a limited amount of time to expend, so they choose the environment which facilitates what they wish to seek out. Saying that he was hanging with the wrong people was glib and not helpful.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#105

Post by _cbsz »

Rantenki wrote: post #47
_cbsz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to DEFCON. The signal-to-noise ratio is kind of meh.

Then you were hanging with the wrong people.

Actually, I sat next to Moxie Marlinspike in a limo. I was referring to attendees in general; a very benign example includes some of my friends who don't really do security but go because it's DEFCON.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#106

Post by HalcyonMuse »

spc476 wrote: post #68
philwelch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more details would make this post informative rather than simply an arcane inside reference.

August, 1981---IBM releases the first IBM PC, legitimizing home computers and killing of a ton of quirky home computers over the next few years. The Homebrew Computer Club was pretty much over at this point in time anyway. January, 1990---Operation Sun Devil goes down, where the Secret Service arrest a bunch of teenagers who have illegally accessed computers and charged with disseminating internal AT&T documents desc…

I'm surprised you didn't mention September 1993, the neverending September.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

This isn't a big date technologically speaking, but as far as the social history of the internet goes, it was huge. I suspect it's one of the big reasons AOL was so demonized. (There are obviously many others.)

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#107

Post by HalcyonMuse »

koepked wrote: post #95
rman666 wrote: post #6

I love Fall. All the colors and a bit of a cold nip in the air ... the really unusual lights ... yellows and darks ... uncommon moods ... brown packages of straw, too.

My apologies for being slow on the uptake, but is there an analogy here or is this just a simple pun?

(t)he (r)eally (u)nusual (l)ights ... (y)ellows (a)nd (d)arks ... (u)ncommon (m)oods ... (b)rown (p)ackages (o)f (s)traw, (t)oo.

You missed it, but no harm done - it was not very interesting to begin with.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#108

Post by HalcyonMuse »

irrelative wrote: post #31
andreyf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a combination of that and of the amount of content respective groups generate - hackers don't have self-indulgent blogs, facebook pages, or youtube channels, and they never did. All that might have changed are the population and diversity if the internet population.

Absolutely. The smartest hackers I know don't even have something as self-indulgent as a public web site. In my experience, hackers have always been the quiet type. Now some loud ones have changed what it means to be a hacker through popularity.

On the other hand, by dint of being so loud, they've given even the quiet hackers some well-deserved recognition. Intellectualism has too long been shunned in the main stream. It's finally become sort of (dare I say it?) cool to be a hacker.

Thus, their volume has contributed some social capital to us.

Re: The Fall of Hacking

#110

Post by etravers »

revorad wrote: post #72

Did you miss this gem? - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976

I remember this one. I've never felt more mediocre than I did after reading that write-up. I don't consider myself a hacker or even much of a programmer. I simply make tools to eliminate the boring and monotonous parts of my job. I tinker a bit at home (when I have time), but I have yet to make anything worth showing off.

If I personally had to define what it means to be a hacker this would be on the (very) short list.

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