Hackers don't tolerate bad behavior. They avoid communities that accept mean people (unless they are also mean). Paul probably only visits Reddit to read comm

Hackers don't tolerate bad behavior. They avoid communities that accept mean people (unless they are also mean). Paul probably only visits Reddit to read comments about something he's done. I left the chatroom #lisp because of the assholicism. (Leaving was an excellent decision. Everything about Lisp can be learned from CLHS, SICP, On Lisp, gigamonkeys.com/book, other books, and Google. It takes patience, but you'll learn far more than by asking someone.) Communities are a source of power - if you've built a strong one, you can usually get rich. But they require huge amounts of time. Unless you're working toward a specific goal, it seems best to be a lone wolf (or part of a small team) and to operate without considering what everyone else has to say, or to offer you. I learned to program almost exclusively by asking people and experimenting. It was a mistake to ask people how to do things. You can learn orders of magnitude faster by reading manuals and books than by trying to get someone to help you. Hacker culture isn't necessary, except to feel good about yourself, which isn't necessary. John Carmack knows so much because he spent most of his time in quiet isolation, meditating on problems, not hanging around communities.