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Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Others have aptly tackled the "computing is forgetting" part of the article, so I want to discuss the Midnight Computer

Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Others have aptly tackled the "computing is forgetting" part of the article, so I want to discuss the Midnight Computer Rewiring Society section. The argument is that they denied somone access to a computer by re-wiring it. But that's not true, anymore than changing the ITS login screen to say "5 losers online" was denying anyone access to that routine. The functioning of the computer had been altered, but Hamilton could have simply popped the front panel and re-wired it back, or translated her program to use the other assembler. She wasn't denied access, the hackers just broke something. There is also the claim that Hamilton's access was considered umimportant without even looking at the code, with the implication that it was because she was a woman. As stated above, Hamilton's access was ininhibited. Her program wouldn't run, but not because the hackers didn't consider her important: they had never considered that someone would use DECAL. It wasn't Hamilton's code they disregarded, it was DECAL itself. In this case, wrongly. Frankly, I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s, and secondly, none of them seem to be in any way accurate. And if you're going to claim sexism, at least have the guts to say it straight up. Hacker ethic and culture may be flawed, but it's the only set of computer ethics and culture that I'd want to be a part of.

webmaven 10y ago
>I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s It is possible to regard the historical period (and by implication, the social context) of the events as an excuse of the pervasive sexism (but given the vaunted propensity to distrust authority and disregard social conventions, it is quite weak as excuses go), but it certainly does not make the events any less sexist.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Because only women were ever prevented from working by Hackers? Much as an intellectual achievement Hamilton's code might have been, it wasn't really that relevant to many people (compared to, say, GNU Software or Linux which benefits billions of people). Presumably it therefore simply wasn't the topic of the book Hackers.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Fair enough. It doesn't. However, it does change our expectations of how sexist the events would be. But this doesn't nullify my second point, which is that the article here doesn't actually demonstrate any sexism at all.
loganmhb 10y ago
My impression was that the implications of sexism were directed at Levy, for glorifying the hackers who made Hamilton's work more difficult while trivializing her work to some degree, not so much at the hackers themselves, who indeed just broke something because they had an incomplete understanding of the system they were working on.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I fail to see how that originates in sexism either...
Mathnerd314 10y ago
I think the bigger problem is her understanding of the "Hands-On Imperative". Yes, it assumes some form of reductionism. That philosophy happens to work really well when you are debugging computers, and indeed in most of life. But there is not an assumption that hackers are "perfect", or that they can make perfect systems, or that they can perfectly model the world. Rather, it is exactly what it says on the tin: an imperative. In particular, it is the notion that the people experiencing the problem should be the most motivated to fix it. The other part of hacking is just the Agile manifesto; if the rules don't let you fix the problem, then fix (or break) the rules. She seems to be misinterpreting this when she discusses "the mistrust of authority"; authority there refers to bureaucracy, composed of arbitrary rules, procedures, and restrictions. It's not a blank check to ignore people (individuals) with concerns. But her final "hacker questions" are mostly of the form "who does X?" so in the end she (mostly) succeeds in repeating the "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" theme. Still a lot of room for improvement though. If programmers spent all their time figuring out "what the data left out", they'd never get a working product.
dang 10y ago
> Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Please don't do this here. You've been posting a lot to HN, so it's important that your posts not degrade the culture here. Civil and substantive comments, please, or no comments.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Okay dang. I was only trying to comment on how contentious the article was. But if it could be taken otherwise...

webmaven 10y ago

>I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s It is possible to regard the historical period (and by implication, the social context) of the events as an excuse of the pervasive sexism (but given the vaunted propensity to distrust authority and disregard social conventions, it is quite weak as excuses go), but it certainly does not make the events any less sexist.

facepalm 10y ago
Because only women were ever prevented from working by Hackers? Much as an intellectual achievement Hamilton's code might have been, it wasn't really that relevant to many people (compared to, say, GNU Software or Linux which benefits billions of people). Presumably it therefore simply wasn't the topic of the book Hackers.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Fair enough. It doesn't. However, it does change our expectations of how sexist the events would be. But this doesn't nullify my second point, which is that the article here doesn't actually demonstrate any sexism at all.

loganmhb 10y ago

My impression was that the implications of sexism were directed at Levy, for glorifying the hackers who made Hamilton's work more difficult while trivializing her work to some degree, not so much at the hackers themselves, who indeed just broke something because they had an incomplete understanding of the system they were working on.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I fail to see how that originates in sexism either...

Mathnerd314 10y ago

I think the bigger problem is her understanding of the "Hands-On Imperative". Yes, it assumes some form of reductionism. That philosophy happens to work really well when you are debugging computers, and indeed in most of life. But there is not an assumption that hackers are "perfect", or that they can make perfect systems, or that they can perfectly model the world. Rather, it is exactly what it says on the tin: an imperative. In particular, it is the notion that the people experiencing the problem should be the most motivated to fix it. The other part of hacking is just the Agile manifesto; if the rules don't let you fix the problem, then fix (or break) the rules. She seems to be misinterpreting this when she discusses "the mistrust of authority"; authority there refers to bureaucracy, composed of arbitrary rules, procedures, and restrictions. It's not a blank check to ignore people (individuals) with concerns. But her final "hacker questions" are mostly of the form "who does X?" so in the end she (mostly) succeeds in repeating the "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" theme. Still a lot of room for improvement though. If programmers spent all their time figuring out "what the data left out", they'd never get a working product.

dang 10y ago

> Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Please don't do this here. You've been posting a lot to HN, so it's important that your posts not degrade the culture here. Civil and substantive comments, please, or no comments.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Okay dang. I was only trying to comment on how contentious the article was. But if it could be taken otherwise...