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Why do we hack?

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Re: Why do we hack?

#21

Post by dist1ll »

elektrontamer wrote: post #19
dist1ll wrote: post #2

I think the "brutal pragmatism" and corpo SWEs have always been an opposing force to the hacking spirit. Catch phrases include, but not limited to: - don't reinvent the wheel - right tool for the job - use a library - time to market - customers don't care about X - premature optimization I hack because it's the expression of the exact freedom that made me interested in computers in the first place. Discouraging devel…

> premature optimization I don't get it. Even when I'm working on a hobby project of no practical value with no deadlines. Premature Optimization is something I'd still like to avoid. I feel like PO harms code maintainability. It's far easier to optimize bottle necks in well written code than do refactor code complicated by PO in my humble opinion. Edit: Newline

Premature optimization should be avoided. It's in the name. But that wasn't really my point.

The problem is that PO is used as a catch-all, low-effort statement to dismiss performance questions and exploration. It's used by devs to antagonize curiosity.

Re: Why do we hack?

#22

Post by racked »

dist1ll wrote: post #2

I think the "brutal pragmatism" and corpo SWEs have always been an opposing force to the hacking spirit. Catch phrases include, but not limited to: - don't reinvent the wheel - right tool for the job - use a library - time to market - customers don't care about X - premature optimization I hack because it's the expression of the exact freedom that made me interested in computers in the first place. Discouraging devel…

That's funny, I don't experience it like that at all. Hacking and exploring is fun, and I did a lot of it when I was younger, but if I'm trying to get things done - which is what I'm doing 95% of the time, be it for work or for a personal project - I rather like to stick to those principles. And the fun comes out of delivering the product, completing the machine.

Maybe it's the result of too many years of freelancing.

Re: Why do we hack?

#23

Post by jagged-chisel »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #11
dist1ll wrote: post #2

I think the "brutal pragmatism" and corpo SWEs have always been an opposing force to the hacking spirit. Catch phrases include, but not limited to: - don't reinvent the wheel - right tool for the job - use a library - time to market - customers don't care about X - premature optimization I hack because it's the expression of the exact freedom that made me interested in computers in the first place. Discouraging devel…

Except for one, all of the above are good bits of wisdom, not reinventing wheels, using the right tool for the job, reuse of libraries, quick time to user - to get feedback. All great engineering - whether you are building for the masses or just yourself to scratch an itch. But one that cuts to the core of a deep problem in computing and sticks out to me is; "customers don't care about X" That's so broken it's not ev…

Indeed, customers don't care about any of the details that go into the solutions we provide. Except the one that faces them: the UI (and related UX.)

Re: Why do we hack?

#24

Post by _0ffh »

dist1ll wrote: post #21
elektrontamer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> premature optimization I don't get it. Even when I'm working on a hobby project of no practical value with no deadlines. Premature Optimization is something I'd still like to avoid. I feel like PO harms code maintainability. It's far easier to optimize bottle necks in well written code than do refactor code complicated by PO in my humble opinion. Edit: Newline

Premature optimization should be avoided. It's in the name. But that wasn't really my point. The problem is that PO is used as a catch-all, low-effort statement to dismiss performance questions and exploration. It's used by devs to antagonize curiosity.

>Premature optimization should be avoided. It's in the name.

Right, the word premature is what makes it a bad thing. What's missing is a complementary concept, let's call it early optimisation. Sometimes you can optimise a thing early on without loss of generality, increase of code complexity (sometimes, with a judicious comment at least, optimised code might even be simpler) or incurring technical debt. The problem is, as there is no awareness of this difference, early optimisation is often misconstrued as premature, even when it really isn't.

Re: Why do we hack?

#25

Post by PeterisP »

082349872349872 wrote: post #8
vgalin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, where does being a "maker" even start? One will always end up using something someone else created, or discovered, whether it is a library, a language, an OS, hardware... Even if you build your own computer from scratch using materials you gathered, you still did not "create" the raw components, did you? All of this is only but a paraphrase of this famous quote from Carl Sagan: "If you wish to make an apple pie…

Proposal: Being a "maker" starts when one's addition —the stone one brings to the soup— is both novel and useful. (the systems integrator may be doing something useful —certainly something lucrative!— while hardly novel; the shade-tree github'er probably has a directory full of explorations that are novel but not —at least not yet?— useful...)

IDK, I definitely don't consider novelty a requirement. Someone who makes a chair or a machine like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgTnfTqycV0 is clearly a maker even if they're just making what many others have already made before; arguably the embodiment of the maker spirit is making something yourself even if someone else's solution is both available and more useful.

Re: Why do we hack?

#26

Post by fulltimeloser »

dist1ll wrote: post #21
elektrontamer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> premature optimization I don't get it. Even when I'm working on a hobby project of no practical value with no deadlines. Premature Optimization is something I'd still like to avoid. I feel like PO harms code maintainability. It's far easier to optimize bottle necks in well written code than do refactor code complicated by PO in my humble opinion. Edit: Newline

Premature optimization should be avoided. It's in the name. But that wasn't really my point. The problem is that PO is used as a catch-all, low-effort statement to dismiss performance questions and exploration. It's used by devs to antagonize curiosity.

I mostly do hobby projects like procedural generation, and I explore stuff I don't understand. As I gain knowledge I refactor and change the code to reflect the new understanding. This new understanding of the problem domain will most often result in performance gain, because the code is much more focused.

Re: Why do we hack?

#28

Post by osullivj »

Because we can't not hack. I've always been interested in writing, and read a bunch of "how to become a writer" stuff. I read a piece with some great writer answering the Q "how do you know you're a writer?" Answer: because you can't not write. I'm perfectly OK with not writing. But not coding? That's another thing...

Re: Why do we hack?

#29

Post by _gabe_ »

elektrontamer wrote: post #19
dist1ll wrote: post #2

I think the "brutal pragmatism" and corpo SWEs have always been an opposing force to the hacking spirit. Catch phrases include, but not limited to: - don't reinvent the wheel - right tool for the job - use a library - time to market - customers don't care about X - premature optimization I hack because it's the expression of the exact freedom that made me interested in computers in the first place. Discouraging devel…

> premature optimization I don't get it. Even when I'm working on a hobby project of no practical value with no deadlines. Premature Optimization is something I'd still like to avoid. I feel like PO harms code maintainability. It's far easier to optimize bottle necks in well written code than do refactor code complicated by PO in my humble opinion. Edit: Newline

I especially love it when people with no knowledge of your code or the systems around it presume to know where the bottlenecks are and tell you to optimize a piece of code nowhere in the vicinity of the critical path. A huge part to optimization is realizing that you have limited time and you want to focus on optimizing the stuff that matters, which means if anyone ever gives you unsolicited advice, they're wrong. Until they've profiled your code, they have no idea where the key optimizations can be found.

Re: Why do we hack?

#30

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

shanebellone wrote: post #3
dist1ll wrote: post #2

I think the "brutal pragmatism" and corpo SWEs have always been an opposing force to the hacking spirit. Catch phrases include, but not limited to: - don't reinvent the wheel - right tool for the job - use a library - time to market - customers don't care about X - premature optimization I hack because it's the expression of the exact freedom that made me interested in computers in the first place. Discouraging devel…

"don't reinvent the wheel" The single worst piece of advice that I consistently see repeated. If you're product is a bunch of APIs, you're a user not a maker.

'Don't reinvent the wheel' is a big reason I've put off almost all side projects that I've wanted to do. Everything I've thought of, someone else has already written, and it's quite demoralising. I end up thinking, 'what's the point?'
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