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Where have all the hackers gone?

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Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#191

Post by d1str0 »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #4

Sorry if this is off-topic but I often see in HN (either in articles posted here, or in the comments) lack of empathy. He talks about a "friend" and then proceeds to say things like "To be honest, I suspect he didn't know or think much about them" or "This was not a fruitful conversation". How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? Is it a cultur…

Right? As he explains, there are many different hierarchies of critiquing a programming language. Yet, they heavily imply if you care about “surface” topics, your feelings aren’t as valid as if you were more interested in the garbage collector.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#192

Post by jstanley »

justinator wrote: post #172
TheDong wrote: post #74

Have other people observed the sentiment the author observes, around hackers being less common? The author has a list of reasons (VC money, business culture, managers, fear of the unknown). I, personally, have observed this reduction over my career, and I have my own idea of why that might be, my own phrasing of it. Perhaps it gets at the same thing as the author from a different angle. I think the reason, plain and…

>When I first started coding, I didn't get paid. I didn't think I ever would. How did you make a living?

Not the person you're responding to, but I didn't make a living because I was 12. I also didn't think it was practical to get paid for programming, except in extreme outlier cases.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#193

Post by watwut »

TheDong wrote: post #74

Have other people observed the sentiment the author observes, around hackers being less common? The author has a list of reasons (VC money, business culture, managers, fear of the unknown). I, personally, have observed this reduction over my career, and I have my own idea of why that might be, my own phrasing of it. Perhaps it gets at the same thing as the author from a different angle. I think the reason, plain and…

> I think the reason, plain and simple, is that most developers aren't really in it for the passion anymore, but rather the money.

Tho, people you call hackers fairly often do not actually like actual work involved in actually doing the programming work. They like tinkering with technology, reading about it, but they do not like creating and maintaining software.

And fairly often, people dismissed by hackers as not passionate, because they are using boring technology, are passionate about actually finishing functional software.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#194

Post by uoaei »

helen___keller wrote: post #90
TheDong wrote: post #74

Have other people observed the sentiment the author observes, around hackers being less common? The author has a list of reasons (VC money, business culture, managers, fear of the unknown). I, personally, have observed this reduction over my career, and I have my own idea of why that might be, my own phrasing of it. Perhaps it gets at the same thing as the author from a different angle. I think the reason, plain and…

Also: potential hackers might never really form into hackers because there’s a strong career path and financial incentive to work on big boring software engineering using the same skills That’s actually the exact same story of how I ended up in computer science instead of pure mathematics. I was interested in pure logic and set theory, but I could flex the same muscles learning programming language theory and end up…

Ditto with a physics education, although I specialized in statistical mechanics and simulation pretty early so it made sense to catch the ML wave.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#195

Post by watwut »

mardifoufs wrote: post #100
ChatGTP wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the forced positivity thing, I work for an American firm and if you're not positive, you're reprimanded. I had to be told several times to learn to feedback constructively. While I do appreciate this, and I understand it, I just feel like a robot now, not a human at work. So much tip toeing around issues it all just feels so fake and there is little room for emotion. Sometimes, I think it's ok to just be…

I think this is just "colder" Europeans that can't understand that Americans are usually genuinely happy in those interactions. Like, they aren't being fake or lying to you when they are overly nice and positive. It's just how they actually feel. I'm neither American nor European but I honestly always felt that Americans are much warmer and genuine than Europeans whenever I visit. But I guess it is harder to see when…

They are not genuine at all. It is just that the express themselves in an passive aggressive way and interpret people expressing doubt as rudeness.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#196

Post by uoaei »

jdm2212 wrote: post #141
margalabargala wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd still be there Unfortunately. Not sure the concentration of Zuckerbergs and the concentration of hackers is particularly related, except maybe the latter attracts the former. Zuckerberg's no genius, he was in the right place at the right time near the right people. He's competent, but no more than most of the people here. His morals (or the flexibility thereof) were what made him rich.

I really wish I was so brimming with self-confidence as to say that I'm just as competent as the guy who founded the eighth or so most valuable company on Earth, and he was just in the right place at the right time. Zuckerberg is clearly a not-great guy in some ways, but the reason we're all posting on Hacker News during the workday and he's running a centibillion dollar company is because he's an immensely intellige…

It's this exact kind of false, retrospective meritocratic judgment that makes gods of mere men. Don't do that, please, it poisons the discourse by distorting reality.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#198

Post by activiation »

TheDong wrote: post #74

Have other people observed the sentiment the author observes, around hackers being less common? The author has a list of reasons (VC money, business culture, managers, fear of the unknown). I, personally, have observed this reduction over my career, and I have my own idea of why that might be, my own phrasing of it. Perhaps it gets at the same thing as the author from a different angle. I think the reason, plain and…

> often become less hacker due to life slowly grinding them down.

AKA just getting older

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#199

Post by pjlegato »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #42
nixpulvis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely have friends that you have unfruitful conversations with. The idea that every interaction needs to be positive to constitute friendship is extremely unhealthy and sterilizing.

And also very American-ised. This forced positivity seems to be a cultural aspect of American life.

Let's not overly stereotype here. America is a huge place with many radically distinct cultural regions.

Certain regions have this "forced positivity culture," notably the west coast. Others, such as the northeast, are famous for the opposite.

American regional cultural differences are obscured -- especially to foreigners -- by the use of a common language. California is as culturally different from Maine as Portugual is from Norway.

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