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Where have all the hackers gone?

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Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#81

Post by helen___keller »

drones wrote: post #44

I think the author of this article grossly misunderstood the purpose of his interaction which lead to this article. You aren't architecting a new programming language, man, you're talking to a guy about computers because you're wearing a shirt of a computer thing he liked. He wanted to talk to you because he had a mutual passion he wanted to share, and you openly challenged him in front of other people. Sorry, you we…

I don’t agree. My perception is that the author doesn’t think “atmosphere” discussions about programming languages are of less value, it’s just an example to segue into the classification of “soil, surface, and atmosphere” as types of programming language considerations, and off of that the observation that the past decade has shifted significantly to “atmosphere” as the most important aspect for safe, boring software engineering (which is the actual primary topic of the article)

None of that is to imply the friend is wrong or inferior in some way

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#82

Post by davedx »

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…

(Can only speak for myself). I’ve a bit of a hacker. To be honest lately, I just find the languages I know are so nice and powerful (enough) that I spend time building interesting and cool things (a AC power flow solver; a networked 3D roguelike game) than hacking around with new shiny languages.

Basically I just really like TypeScript. Languages I’ve worked with or tried out for the pure hackery spirit of exploration: assembly, C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, Clojure(script), Lisp, Elm, C# (did lots of neat stuff with that, thanks Unity!), PHP, scala, go, Pascal, VB, probably a couple more I forget. More tech stacks than I can think of.

FOR ME, TypeScript is just so good for what I want to do that I just don’t want to mess about with other tools or “spend innovation tokens”. I just wanna build stuff!

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#84

Post by SkyMarshal »

ChatGTP wrote: post #59
lloydatkinson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

As an American, I think there are two sides to this coin. On the one hand we have various (annoying) forms of forced positivity. American cheerleader culture is one, the cult of PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) is another, and similar things. It’s like some of us think the natural state of humans is to be overtly happy all the time, and if you’re not you’re deviant.

On the other hand though, toxicity is worth avoiding. It can ruin team dynamics, and turn a high-functioning org into a backstabbing dysfunctional one. For instance, one wise thing Joe Biden did at the start of his term was to require that everyone in his administration be nice to each other, treat their colleagues with respect and dignity [1]. He was preemptively killing toxicity before it could emerge. HN enforces this too as a matter of policy.

You can of course have the latter without the former. And criticism can be constructive and honest without being overtly cheery. (The Japanese are good at this fwiw - “Fix the problem not the blame”). But some Americans, subcultures, and corporate cultures, don’t always understand the distinction and mix them up. And some business people believe that happy workers are more productive, and so encourage positivity for that reason, even though studies on the subject have long produced mixed results.

[1]:https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-administration-be-nic...

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#85

Post by chefandy »

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…

Yeah-- that's always been the case in more technical crowds from my experience. I switched to HN from Slashdot like a decade ago because the Slashdot crowd seemed to get overrun with folks like that.

Recently, I most frequently notice it when people discuss potential job losses from AI automation. Regardless of whether or not this is good for society, it's absolutely bizarre how many folks around here (and some other places, like related subreddits,) gleefully dance on the grave of artists of all people. Some seem to disdain creatives wanting to participate in our economy using their hard-won skills and vocation, almost as if their doing so is oppressive to non-artists. Others seem to think it appropriate to act like they've just beaten them in a game. The majority of folks around here seem to act pretty reasonably about it but that vocal minority is obnoxious, to say the least.

Accuracy of their predictions aside, it's just a disgusting way to talk about people whose careers, they imagine, were just unexpectedly flushed down the toilet through no fault of their own. Unsurprisingly, these people usually have the least sophisticated, and least useful philosophical understanding of what art is. I imagine this is a cognitive limitation directly related to their empathic limitations.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#86

Post by confoundcofound »

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 hacker culture of the ‘90s to early ‘00s is behind us, and it really saddens me. I’ve yet to find a corner of the current tech / startup landscape that ignites the same excitement I felt over a decade ago. It’s too commercial now.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#87

Post by davedx »

tinco wrote: post #29

Just to set the context: I like Golang as a language, but I think writing a program that's more than ~10k lines of code in Golang is a mistake (honestly, the limit is probably a lot lower), and I also don't think they should've added generics, just leave the language as useful as it is. Anyway, I think the author missed the point a bit with his friends argument about "Go developers knew that all you need is a for loo…

Having worked with Scala I disagree it’s a safe choice. Scala is a huge, complicated, difficult language built on the huge (but very powerful) JVM. It’s also hard to hire Scala devs AND hard to train non Scala devs to write Scala, because it’s not a language you can learn in a weekend. (Speaking from experience)

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#88

Post by goodpoint »

jdm2212 wrote: post #80
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…

There are just a lot more programmers today. All the same hackers and stuff who used to be there are still there, but there's a lot more of everyone else. If Harvard started admitting 50,000 students a year, the density of Zuckerbergs would be a lot lower. They'd still be there, but harder to find.

Zuckerbergs?! What the hell?

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#89

Post by narag »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #77
narag wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that supposed friend, who might very well be aware of this person's blog, going to feel after reading this? In Spanish there's a saying, la confianza da asco , that could be translated more or less as "familiarity sucks". You often treat your friends and family worse than you would to strangers. It also means that if a good friend doesn't talk truth to you, who will?

I think that "familiarity breeds contempt" is probably a closer translation there, and a phrase that most English speakers would have heard before

Yes, your "I know you so I don't like you" is close to our "you know me so you need to suffer me" but subtly different.

Re: Where have all the hackers gone?

#90

Post by helen___keller »

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 with much better odds of paying off student loans by the time I’m 30

People only have so much time in life. If I could enjoy my work 30% more that would be great. Is it worth making less than half income though?

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