8 ms·

If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

• JanezStupar 16y ago
  Whatever, moar feminist fascism. I did get my first computer when I was age 8. That was back in 1991 and all I got was nearly 10 year old ZX Spectrum. I guess I WAS privileged, but the privilege was that my parents, although old (mother was 41 when she conceived) and uneducated, they both only have primary schools - father is barely literate, mother heavily dyslectic. But they have seen the future and wanted a piece of it for their kid. I had the lousiest clothes, the worst shoes and least friends. But I had forward thinking parents and my own computer ever since. I believe these "its all male conspiracy" radical feminists should spend more time working with younger girls instead of ranting in books and teh webz. Before you start downvoting me - know that I know what women are capable of. I was raised by one that is a total badass and kept tearing men new ones throughout her life (she was a truck driver back in 70's, etc.). But these whiny girlies need to woman-up and do some work.
  • mattkern 16y ago
    Sorry, but hardly fascism. It's appalling how few people actually know what fascist means.
    • tibbon 16y ago
      Feminist fascism doesn't have to imply everything about fascism. Its a compound phrase. Just as 'fly fishing' has little to do with the wright brothers. He's more talking about militant feminism (again, which has little to do with the military). Militant Feminism seems is where women try to find every reason in the book that white, middle class, men are the root of all evil. It may or may not be a real thing, but that's what people are thinking of when they say this.
• tptacek 16y ago
  Ugh. I sympathize with this argument but its flaws are so glaring that it's trivially knocked down, which is a shame, because there is a class privilege argument to be made about this field. Before you say "programming since age 8 just means you had rich parents", you have to address the fact that most kids with rich parents don't become hackers, and that even if you're not impoverishing yourself to support the hobby, you're still making sacrifices (notably social) to support it.
  • jerf 16y ago
    I've had a computer for a long time, but looking back, when I was 8 I was lower-middle to middle-middle class at best. I say "looking back" because I didn't really realize it at the time, but in hindsight it's pretty clear. My dad bought a Commodore 64 not because he was rolling in filthy upper-class lucre, but because he saw the future coming and made that a priority for himself. And it had been out for a while before I got one; I think my dad said he bought it at $299. Which is of course still more than $299 today, but there's a lot of people who could scrape up enough for the C=64, disk drive, handful of floppies, and some TV somewhere (mine certainly wasn't a new TV!). I find it hard to apologize for being lower-middle class at the age of 8-ish. Over the years he clawed his way up to middle-middle class and I did end up with a family computer of more value in my midteens, but, well, again, I have a hard time apologizing for this. (Which was actually somewhat harder to work with than the C=64, in many ways; open source was terribly young and I had no access to the Internet for quite a while. The BBS software percolation system wasn't necessarily the best. Everything commercial was out of my reach, especially before open source started forcing dev environments down in price.) There has to be some point where people take responsibility for themselves, after all; nobody forced me to actually learn about it instead of just playing games like all my friends of equal class who also had such machines.
    • mcgraw 16y ago
      The key here is you were able to snag influence from your Dad. Luckily he was bright enough to see the potential and was resourceful which spawned your interest.
• adamgravitis 16y ago
  Wholeheartedly disagree. As evidence, the author mentions the late average age that the underprivileged "received" their first computer. As I recall, one Bill Gates began hacking at an early age, not because his privileged family showered him with cutting-edge technology, but because he bent a few rules to gain better access to a terminal through school. Let's not confuse resourcefulness with privilege.
  • pgbovine 16y ago
    but because he bent a few rules to gain better access to a terminal through school. iirc, gates went to a pretty well-off private school that actually HAD computers. i doubt that most people attending public schools in the 60's could even find a computer anywhere nearby. this is documented in Gladwell's Outliers (ducks!)
    • jerf 16y ago
      Trying to take this point back to the 60s is stretching it beyond usefulness, though; in the 60s even having privilege would hardly have been a guarantee of access to computers. It depended on many other things, too. Note that I do not accuse the original author of trying to stretch this, nor you; just pointing out that if we're going back that far it becomes a completely different issue. (We can wish really hard that every child of the 1960s had access to computers for learning, but we might as well wish that every child of the 1860s had such access for all the practicality that has.)
    • mcgraw 16y ago
      Yeah, that definitely helps. I wasn't rocking a computer at home until 15 and I'm incredibly thankful I was able to get that when I did. My public schools in the middle of KS wasn't doing anything with computers when I was 8 and I didn't know anyone who talked about them.
• pgbovine 16y ago
  oh wow, this article is bound to get flogged on HN ;) before the onslaught begins, i'd like to add my own short anecdote. reading this article reminds me of when i took my first CS course as a freshman in college over a decade ago ... i remember that there were clearly 2 groups of students (i belonged to the latter): - those who, like this article describes, had hacked since a young age (sorry for the gross generalization, but these tended to be middle or upper middle class white males) - those who had maybe taken AP Computer Science in high school but otherwise had no real programming experience (these tended to be minorities in race, social class, and gender) i remember that despite the best efforts of the teaching staff to 'level the playing field', the people in the former group clearly had a much easier time while many people in the latter group were intimidated by those in the former group (even when no ill will was intended). i dunno where i'm going with this anecdote, but that just popped into my head :)
  • Unseelie 16y ago
    The same attitude is effaced on HN about persons in liberal arts studies. A hacker was brilliant enough to see that the world was headed into computers, or their parents were, and they were led down the right path. People are bound to want to claim that people deserve what they get, it justifies their wealth, and comforts them in the face of another's misfortune. Anyone who had access to a computer at 8, whether their parents worked hard to buy it, or had flows of wealth, was damn lucky, and needs to recognize that they are damn lucky. Anyone smarter than the average has to recognize that they're damn lucky. And if there's any posthumanists in the crowd, they should figure its quickly in their interest to view society from a perspective where the weak get supported: we're all of us quickly falling into the category of the weak.
    • all 16y ago
      Lucky, yes, but not privileged. The plethora of stories listed here, to which my own could be added, show that we were just lucky to get hold of computers so young.
• Tichy 16y ago
  Honestly, I don't think those computers were that expensive. My first Computer was not even a C64, it was a ZX Spectrum. Not sure how much it cost - but if that was too much, you could get "build your own" kits for ZX 81, I think they were << 100$ (maybe 50$)? Without a doubt, there were a lot of people in the world who couldn't afford it. But in the western world, I suspect not that many. The privilege is more having parents who are understanding and caring enough to make the investment. Granted, you also needed a TV... How common were TVs back then? I am pretty sure a TV was way more expensive than a ZX Spectrum. While for the C64 you needed an extra storage medium, the Spectrum could save to and load from normal tape recorders. Edit: this link says the initial price was 125GBP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Research Unfortunately I still don't know how much that was in $ or DM.
  • mian2zi3 16y ago
    I remember mine (1981-2) being $100, but that was a long time ago. We hooked it to a junky old black and white TV somebody had thrown out. I think TVs were pretty ubiquitous by then.
    • mian2zi3 16y ago
      And (TVs) certainly not a sign of privilege.
• starkfist 16y ago
  The class privilege in hackerland is when Youtube gets bought for a billion dollars because one of the founders is getting married to the daughter of SV royalty, not that your parents could afford a $600 computer in 1985.
  • quadhome 16y ago
    Because? Presuming you're referring to Chad Hurley, you think that Google bought YouTube because he married Jim Clark's daughter? Jim Clark, who as far as I can tell, didn't invest in Google, doesn't work for them, and isn't on their board.
    • starkfist 16y ago
      Jim Clark got them the investment from Sequoia. Google would have bought them, but the reason they bought them for a billion dollars instead of a hundred million is because of the intertwined social aspect of all the people at Google and Sequoia involved with the deal.
      • quadhome 16y ago
        Both firms were funded by and had close ties with Sequoia. And that's why Google bought YouTube for more than they were worth?
        • starkfist 16y ago
          No.
          • quadhome 16y ago
            I don't understand then. :-( Thanks for your time and responses.
• joshfraser 16y ago
  guilty as charged. i attribute a lot of my success and my love of computers to my dad buying me an apple 2E and a programming book when i was 10. now hardly a day goes by when i don't think how lucky i am to be doing something i love. so yes, i was privileged and for that i am incredibly grateful.
• tkahn6 16y ago
  Computer penetration in the US in 2001 was 61% and for the most part, those who didn't have a computer felt that they didn't need one[1]. Most incoming undergrads were 8 in 2000 so I would assert that this argument has no basis going forward. [1 http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2002/03/18/daily2.html http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2002/03/18/da... ]
  • knowtheory 16y ago
    how do you figure? I presume that they weren't interviewing school children for the survey. You can hardly say that, because 39% adults thought that a computer was unnecessary, deciding (rightly or wrongly) to not get a PC wouldn't disadvantage their potential hacker children, when compared to hacker children who did have parents who jobs required them to have computers.
    • tkahn6 16y ago
      The article argues that most hackers are hackers because their parents were wealthy. At some point you must accept that this argument is no longer applies for some generation of hackers and those that follow it. I submit that 10 years ago, economics no longer played a role in whether some one could afford a computer. Your point could apply to any generation of hackers because it's analogous to "what if some parents didn't let their children use a computer until they were 12?" or "what if some parents didn't allow their children to install a python interpreter?" Also, you should consider that in 2000 nearly all school children had access to school computers.
      • kd0amg 16y ago
        At some point you must accept that this argument is no longer applies for some generation of hackers and those that follow it. Of course, but it looks to me like most of those working in the industry are still a fair bit older than I am (and it's been a few years since I was an incoming undergrad).
• donaldc 16y ago
  Whether this is true for a given person depends on when they were 8. For a 48-year-old, this would certainly be true. For an 18-year-old, not so much. The march of technology has more or less solved this one particular issue.
• acgourley 16y ago
  It depends how old you are now.
• mian2zi3 16y ago
  I don't buy it. I grew up on a subsistence farm and we were, I think, living well below the poverty line. I started programming when I was 8, on a Timex Sinclair 1000, which my brother and I saved up to buy. We learned by trial and error and a ZX81 assembly book that came from the library. I picked raspberries one summer (among other things) to buy a C64. > Me and some of my black friends were talking about the other guys in CS. Some of them have been programming since they were eight. We can’t compete with that. That's an unfortunate attitude and just not true. This reminds me of a thread (on mathoverflow I think, but I can't find it) where the general consensus was working hard throughout grad school (in math) was the great equalizer, and mattered more than how much background you came in with. The same is true for undergrad and CS. Moreover, it isn't a competition. Someone else being an amazing hacker doesn't detract from what you know. In fact, having such people around can teach and inspire. I'd much rather be a small fish in a big pond (as I am.)
  • all 16y ago
    "working hard throughout grad school (in math) was the great equalizer" The trouble is that so many people don't do that. But also there is only so much that effort can overcome. I have been coding for nigh on 30 years, having started with a hand-me-down Trash 80, Model I, Level 1. I have worked in all kinds of environments and hired coders who fell variously into both camps. Almost without fail, the coders who have been coding since they were kids do better. It is almost like breathing for them. I don't know how to explain it, but they have almost a Zen-like relationship with the machine that no degree or amount of compressed effort will match. I would like it to be so, but it just isn't the case in my experience.
• jcapote 16y ago
  Bull. Shit. When I was 8 years old, I started computing, but not at all because I was privileged. Just because someone has a computer at a young age doesn't mean they're parents went out and bought a state of the art computer. As an immigrant family we couldn't afford much in the way of leisure, but they at least knew a good deal when they saw one. So, when they saw a "computer" at the local flea market for a $100, they went for it. That means that I was hacking BASIC in DOS on a Tandy 1000 while all my friends played flight simulators in Windows 3.11 on their immensely more expensive/powerful 486's.
  • mattkern 16y ago
    Seriously. My parent were broke, too, and they went to some spiel on a timeshare to get a blisterkey timex mini computer thing (this by the way is how we got our family toaster, as well). But it spoke basic. And I started there. With a free POS computer that was more like a calculator. Arguments about privilege and CS degrees are apologetic and sound an awful lot like excuse-making. Access means a lot, but it's irresponsible to alienate entire classes with broad-stroke generalizations. This is the same sort of crap that makes the Left look so lame. And I can't quite get the intent behind the post. If it's simply to increase access, then that's a noble cause. But it sure seemed more like whining.
• colkassad 16y ago
  When I was eleven my father -- a painter who worked fourteen hour days -- bought me an Atari 400 because it was the one thing I wanted most in the world at the time. We were not privileged...my father just recognized a desire and talent in me that he wanted to help foster. I love you, Dad.
• terra_t 16y ago
  Bull. My parents were working class slobs, but they bought me a computer at the age of 10. It was a TRS-80 Color Computer which was the cheapest thing you could get at that time. It was just about the only thing they spent money on for me. I got no piano lessons, no braces, no model rockets, nothing -- except a Dad who wouldn't take a foreman position when he was offered one, a Mom who taught me to "stay in a dead end job you hate no matter what"... Hell, the schoolteacher and carpenter next door wouldn't talk to me family since they thought my parents were just a bunch of scabs...
• cheald 16y ago
  What a load of bollocks. My parents were dirt-poor (on an first-world scale) growing up. I did all my early learning on an IBM PC-XT (which was given to us). It was nearly decade-old technology by the time I started in on QBasic, and not worth very much at all. I bought my first computer at age 14, with money that I'd made over the summer gutting and renovating houses. Sure, in a sense, I was privileged, in that my dad did everything he could to give me a competitive advantage by introducing me to logic (I wore out his Martin Gardner books), chess (he never pulled a punch. We played for years before I beat him), classical literature (what extra money he had went to books. He has a library I still envy), music (he has a degree in music, which helps explain the lack of financial resources), and mathematics (he taught me algebra and trig years before I ran into them in school). He inspired a thirst for learning in me, and did everything he could to develop my ability to think critically because he didn't have financial resources. If that's a "disgusting flaunting of privilege", then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to apologize for having parents who cared about me enough to push me to develop my ability to think. They did the same with my other siblings - two younger sisters and a brother. None of them are programmers, despite the fact that they grew up with more money and technology than I did. What this article really reads like is someone with a martyr complex making excuses for why they aren't good at whatever. Sure, there are people who are in CS who were privileged, and given a leg up by parents who could afford expensive technology, but it's flatly offensive to say that everyone who was interested in computers from a young age is a spoiled child of privilege who flaunts that privilege in others' faces.
  • oldgregg 16y ago
    Same story here. Our family was poor-- getting evicted was like a family past time. My brother and I were salvaging 8088s and 286s when 486s/Pentiums were selling for an unimaginable amount of $1400. We would dial into the library with our 2400 baud modem-- I designed my geocities homepage offline and then uploaded it using Lynx because it was the only free internet access I could find.
• ido 16y ago
  20 year olds today were 8 in 1998. In pretty much all of the western world, by the 1990s (and even mid/late 80s) owning a computer was within the reach of all but the retched poor. My parents bought a PC XT clone in 1987 and they were at best middle-class.
• joeycfan 16y ago
  True - when I was ten in 1966 I, following the instructions in a library book, built a Turing machine out of two sheets of paper and, following the program there, added two symbols to three symbols to get five symbols. That was a ll the computer there was for kids in 1966. Also, this article is total PC crap, following the standard anti-male, anti-white, wahwah bullshit. She DOES actually touch at the truth for a second when she quotes this “There is a subset of boys and men who burn with a passion for computers and computing. Through the intensity of their interest, they both mark the field as male and enshrine in its culture their preference for single-minded intensity and focus on technology.” This is totally true and I was one of them. Oh, and of course, we're racist too. Here's an exchange- Because of systemic racism, class differences correlate with racial demographics. In the Racialicious post Gaming Masculinity, Latoya quotes a researcher’s exchange with an African American male computer science (CS) undergraduate: “Me and some of my black friends were talking about the other guys in CS. Some of them have been programming since they were eight. We can’t compete with that. Now, the only thing that I have been doing since I was eight is playing basketball. I would own them on the court. I mean it wouldn’t be fair, they would just stand there and I would dominate. It is sort of like that in CS.” – Undergraduate CS Major Magically, when the black BB guy owns you on the court it is somehow NOT unfair at all.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• rdtsc 16y ago
  That is simply not true. We weren't poor growing up but we were not far from it (at least according to the Western standards). I remember having to eat only once a day and wearing clothes with holes in them because we couldn't afford to go clothes shopping. My father, a good engineer with a university degree lost his job after the Soviet collapse and my mom had to work 2 janitor jobs. However, if my father knew someone who had a broken radio or TV he would get it for me so I can take it appart and play with the innards. I had a soldering iron and a neighbor had given me his old voltmeter. So I was learning quite a bit without having expensive equipment. I started to like computers, because I saw them at schools. The Americans had donated us some nice shiny IBM computers and we were fighting to get access to them after school. My mom notice my new infatuation with computers, and she saved enough money for half a year and then bought a Russian ZX Spectrum knock-off and a tape player. I had asked my neighbor (who was a TV repairman) to hook the console up to our old black and white TV. Then I learned English so I could read all the programming manuals. My friends used to copy and pirate games. But I enjoyed writing basic, assembly, pascal and C. If you segfaulted, you had to reaload the compiler from tape so you waiting for 10 minutes. It was a fun but very arduous process. Anyway, the fact that we were poor didn't prevent me from hacking since I remember. All it matters is to have good parents who really support and nurture education. (By the way mom was not allowed to go to school after her 7th grade because she had to support her family. I think she vowed that her children will get all the education they want no matter what).
  • hbd 16y ago
    "My father, a good engineer with a university degree" Are you sure you (and those who upvoted) know what social class is? To be fair there are many definitions, but having a university degree would be put your father as middle class in most of them. "All it matters is to have good parents who really support and nurture education." And that's in most cases parents who themselves are educated, which has been shown in countries with free education. "That is simply not true." Just because you have a different experience doesn't mean you're the norm or that the argument is invalid.
    • rdtsc 16y ago
• ganley 16y ago
  Wrong, unless "privileged" means "not in abject poverty." We were distinctly lower-middle-class. I bought my first computer myself with my lifetime-accumulated birthday/lawnmowing/snowshoveling money.
• phoenixsol 16y ago
  I wouldn't say privileged, but certainly lucky. My father worked very hard on the railroad for his money. He wasn't 'privileged' himself, either; he came from a poor family and rose to the middle class by working like a dog. Also, I knew some 'very poor' kids who had these machines. Funny, I don't remember them being expensive (but what did I know; I was 8 ;) Maybe they were; I'm too lazy to research it.
  • ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    He was "privileged", it's just that the term has a particular meaning when used here that is different from "rich" or "wealthy" which you and it seems every other poster in the thread so far has missed. There's a fairly comprehensive introduction to it here: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-is-male-privilege/ http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-... "Since social status is conferred in many different ways — everything from race to geography to class — all people are both privileged and non-privileged in certain aspects of their life. Furthermore, since dynamics of social status are highly dependent on situation, a person can benefit from privilege in one situation while not benefiting from it in another. It is also possible to have a situation in which a person simultaneously is the beneficiary of privilege while also being the recipient of discrimination in an area which they do not benefit from privilege. Male privilege is a set of privileges that are given to men as a class due to their institutional power in relation to women as a class. While every man experiences privilege differently due to his own individual position in the social hierarchy, every man, by virtue of being read as male by society, benefits from male privilege." That's just male privilege, you get others from class, sexuality, religion, health etc.
• abstractbill 16y ago
  No, it doesn't. I bought my first computer in the 80s, when I was 9 years old, for 10 UK pounds that I had saved from delivering papers. My family was quite poor, and my parents never would have bought me a computer. My ZX81 was considered old and crappy when I bought it, but I taught myself to program using it.
• nzmsv 16y ago
  When I was growing up, my parents wanted me to be a normal kid. This means I was made to play outside a lot. A couple of my friends' parents were programmers, so they had computers at home. They could write programs in BASIC and Pascal and make them do cool things. I wanted to do that too. I had a notebook where I would secretly write BASIC (it was terrible code, by the way). My school had computers, a whole 10 of them. They were 286s running DOS. When I would get a chance, I would plead with a teacher at my school to let me stay in the computer lab after hours and try out my code. I got my first computer at 14. Now, it wasn't my computer. I could have at most an hour a week on it. This was a rule that was strictly enforced. So I was still writing a lot of code on paper (usually hidden under my math notebook). So I was never encouraged to become a programmer, I was actively discouraged from doing that. But somehow even without access to a computer I wanted to code. At a certain point my parents just gave up trying to make me a lawyer or doctor. So there's a happy ending. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story.
• viggity 16y ago
  Screw you lady. I'm tired of you and your "social justice" cabal that try to make me feel guilty about EVERYTHING. I started programming in high school and I've worked my fucking ass off getting to where I am. Your article does nobody any fucking good. All it does is try to make certain people feel guilty about their success and gives everyone else an excuse to not work hard because "well, the cards are just stacked against you". Fuck you. You rob people of motivation.
  • dgabriel 16y ago
    I think you've misread the article. You have worked hard, which is great. Other people have also worked hard, but they started later and had fewer opportunities in this field. Does this mean you should feel guilty? No. It means that you should try to treat everyone with respect, not just the lucky ones who had the right kind of access to the right kind of tools as children. It means sneering at that person in class who doesn't know what a for-loop is is unhelpful and jerky. If you don't behave that way, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
• scott_s 16y ago
  I'm not sure where I fit in this discussion. I was comfortably middle class growing up. But I didn't have a computer until I was a sophomore in high school. And while I thought it was cool and I spent time on it, I didn't do any actual programming until I took a course my senior year of high school. In my freshmen year of college, as a CS major, there were plenty of students who had been programming much, much longer than me. In theory, I was at a disadvantage because just about everything was new to me. But, in practice, everything evened out by about junior year. Yes, the students who started programming well before college were at an advantage for the first few programming intensive courses. But very quickly, a CS curriculum goes into material most people don't teach themselves.
• Perceval 16y ago
  The article doesn't really have a point. The title is really the only thing that the article is trying to demonstrate. "Privileged" is a code word in feminist discourse, and is applied to virtually any and every distinction that social beings make. The overall thrust of the article is to shame—i.e. if you had an opportunity that others didn't have, you should feel guilty about it. It's not clear to me how this kind of discourse moves society forward. Everyone has different opportunities, no one is pretending that poor people have just as easy a time as rich people. If you have a claim to status ("I've been hacking since age 8") that's based on a pre-existing advantage, you should feel guilty for claiming such status. This type of discourse is not about hacking or hackers or geek culture, it's a discourse that is deeply offended by the very existence of status or distinctions, and has trouble believing that any source of privilege has been earned (unless you happen to have a subaltern identity).
  • dgordon 16y ago
    Well put. To use an example that's well-known here, this is like pretending that Bill Gates only became Bill Gates because he had rich parents and got access to a computer at 14 years old in the late 1960s, and that his great intelligence and willingness to work harder than most people have even considered working at developing his ability were irrelevant or incidental. The implication that if you're white, male, middle-class or up, etc., then you're only where you are because of unfair advantage and should be considered an "oppressor" is everywhere in this sort of so-called discourse. Look to the Soviet Union or Khmer Cambodia for what this ideology, empowered and taken to an extreme with some slightly different axioms, can lead to. By the way, thanks for teaching me a word -- "subaltern." I was disappointed to see that it's mostly an identity-politics buzzword, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it.
• p01nd3xt3r 16y ago
  I am a black male. My father made 30k a year. He could never afford a computer for me but I have been hacking since 10. A computer teacher of mine sent me to see some friends of hers on a "Kids to go work" day and I got an internship out of it. I was there so much (and even sleep there if they would let me) they let me work for a computer. My point is that if your really want to do something you will find a way to do it; that is a true hustlers mentality. FYI: Im a beast on the basketball court too.
• dsspence 16y ago
  I had early access to computers but never programmed or hacked (besides changing resource files in Mac OS) until taking a formal Pascal class in high school. I remember committing my first crime of copyright infringement, giving the elementary school our copy of Mario Teaches Typing to install in the lab. As someone who liked computers but didn't start programming until later, I would argue if you started hacking at age 8 you are just a geek (me too), nothing more, nothing less.
• wvenable 16y ago
  I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was around 8 -- my entire family chipped in and it was pretty much the only Christmas present I got that year. My school had a few Commodore 64s and we got to have one in our class room for a few months. I was instantly interested in computers and read all the computer books we had in the school library. My grade 3 teacher was the one that recommended to my parents that they get me a computer. If anything in that article is actually true, I think it's ancient history now. Computers are quite literally everywhere now; even those 10 years younger than me were better off. The point about girls and computers is definitely out of date; I have a 13 year old daughter and her and all her friends have constant access to computers.
• benharrison 16y ago
  My Dad purchased his first computer when I was 10. I learned a tremendous amount from my experiences with it, and for that I've always considered myself fortunate. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but they were able to afford a computer and they loved me enough to encourage my interests in it. So in that regard I definitely feel privileged. Growing up I knew of a few kids who were just as interested in computers but weren't as lucky. They had all the potential in the world, but lacked the same opportunities I had. I was always aware of my "privilege", so I've felt it important over the years to help out in community computer labs and to help deserving kids by giving them older computers when I would get my hands on them. But that said, I've also known plenty of 'privileged' kids with access to technology at their disposal but had no interest, or took no initiative to learn advanced concepts. For instance, my brothers didn't have the same interest in computers as I did. They were into other things, even though they had just as much access to our parent's computers as me. I believe the most important factors for developing strong skills in computers (or anything else for that matter) is desire, effort, and dedication. These things don't have a price tag, and are not limited to certain groups of individuals.
• solson 16y ago
  Most geeks I know were the BOTTOM of the social class in school and in society, partially because they started programming at 8 or before. Like me they were borderline aspies who were more interested in things than people. The type of person that gets completely obsessed with computers and gaming at a young age tends to be a dorky white guy (but not always). It's just the cards falling where they fall and has nothing do with sexism, racism, or bias. From my life observations, if there is a social bias in society, especially at school age, it is AGAINST kids who program at 8. That entire post reeks of victimhood. The comments concern me even more, with the constant haranguing about racism, sexism, bias, etc. The entire premise of the piece seems elitist, snooty, and spiteful. There aren't too many white guys in CS and there aren't too many black guys in the NBA and there aren't too many female kindergarten teachers. It doesn't need fixing. Knock it off with the social engineering and let us be who we are, without being lumped in with another -ism that must be corrected by a central planner.
• wccrawford 16y ago
  I got into programming in 4th grade. I had a sinclair 1000 when I was a kid. http://oldcomputers.net/ts1000.html http://oldcomputers.net/ts1000.html Yes, $100. NOT a rich family's computer. Eventually, I got a Commodore 16. $100 also. Then, when that died and I was crazy about it, I got a Commodore 64. $600. Well, -I- didn't get it. The family did. I had to share with my sister and mother. (Dad didn't care.) Eventually I got my first IBM-compatible. Again, shared. It was about $2500, if I remember correctly. This was about 10 years after the first computer our house had, I think. I didn't have other hobbies. There were no expensive lessons or instruments to buy for me. Video games? Atari 2600, then 7800 that were bought used and dirt-cheap. No, you don't -need- to have a wealthy family to get into programming early.
• nathanielksmith 16y ago
  Despite being excessive at points ("disgusting flaunting of privilege") I think the article points out a real problem. In my experience, the only way to fill this gap is to actively--as adult programmers--"bootstrap" the computing lives of lower class children in our communities. For example, I volunteer with a church ministry that refurbishes old machines, installs Ubuntu, and gives them / grants them to those who need them (we just call it the Hardware Cooperative). Our last machine went to a child who just turned 10. His family is low-income and their lone computer was a decade old HP running a virus-filled XP that rebooted every few minutes. We gave him a speedy little box with Edubuntu on it and he was thrilled by it. He took to it immediately and was engrossed by Tux4Kids and more. Without our donation, it was obvious that he wasn't going to go anywhere with computers on that XP machine. Without us "bootstrapping" the process for him, I don't see how he ever could have developed an interest in computers, but now I'd say there's a fairly big chance. So yes: check your privilege if you've got it. But more proactively, look to see how you can prevent these kinds of gaps in the future.
  • jafran 16y ago
    This is totally awesome. It draws a real contrast between programmers and the article's author(s). Academic style discourse never attempts to propose any solutions or valorize any sort of action whatsoever. Instead, the point is mainly to grandstand and to call out everyone. Those of higher socio-economic standing are always at fault, those of lower are always blameless/helpless/or otherwise without agency.
    • dgabriel 16y ago
      I agree that the project is awesome, but without those who criticize and analyze, no thought gets put into how to make the world better. Note: there is no "fault." There are built-in injustices in society that are not due to some inherent evil lurking in the hearts of wealthy white men. By the same token, people who are poor or lack certain privileges are not stupid, bad, or inherently lesser humans because they do not possess the same knowledge and skill set as someone who has/had more advantages growing up.
  • 16y ago
• ryanricard 16y ago
  One beef with the article, one with the tone of many of the upvoted replies: As for the article, I'd argue that the strict ability to afford a computer matters much less than the understanding of why a computer is useful, how to get the most out of it, and even that it can be programmed by kids. Possessing the knowledge that computers can be programmed by kids to do fun and useful things is, I'd argue, correlated with socioeconomic status. Passing that knowledge onto your kids is also correlated with the gender of those kids, it seems. Of course, the fact that one comes from a privileged position doesn't require an apology. Nobody is asking anyone for a heartfelt "I'm sorry" note, or a reparations check, or whatever. One can be aware of one's position of privilege without being ashamed of it. I for one fondly remember the feeling of empowerment when I was able to fire up my dad's copy of Visual Basic and create a working facsimile of Blackjack. I was using a real, grown up tool to create real, cool stuff all by myself (well, not really, but it sure felt that way). I'd love to give any kid the chance to feel that sense of limitless power.
  • Tichy 16y ago
    I must admit I wasn't programming anything useful as a kid. I was more into graphical effects and games.
• drv 16y ago
  It is unclear to me what argument this article is trying to make - the headline makes me think it is about getting early access to computers due to rich parents, and it partly is, but then it dives off on a tangent about gender. (Disclaimer: I fit the stereotype of the title exactly, as I am a male who started programming when I was roughly 10 on a computer bought by my parents.) This is only personal experience, but my family had a computer when I was young (8 or 9, and my siblings are a couple years younger). This was a family computer, not mine personally, and my brother and sister were both exposed to it as well, with equal opportunity to experiment and learn, but neither of them developed an interest in programming or computer technology like I did. There was no gender bias when computer access was given - we all used it on a regular basis. Maybe this is untrue for other families, but my sister had just as much opportunity to uncover computer science aspirations at roughly the same age as me. I certainly agree with the idea that "class" (or at least parents' foresight in buying computers) influenced my ability to get involved with computers early, but I didn't observe any gender bias in this early exposure. Surely this is becoming even more true with the proliferation of computers in everyday life - if you can use Facebook, you have enough access to learn much more about computers. The only impediment is your curiosity about the topic. Perhaps there are other gender-related factors that determine whether one is likely to be a self-motivated proto-hacker, but computer access doesn't seem to be one of them.
• mattlanger 16y ago
  Interesting how many of the comments in this thread take the form of "This article is bullshit! I started coding when I was eight because I got my first computer by way of [something other than privilege or affluence]." Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data. [Full disclosure: I did my first hacking with BASIC and Rexx at around seven or eight because my parents were wealthy enough to afford an Amiga 500--but this experience would never inspire me to write an article claiming that everyone who started coding at a young age must have come from similar socioeconomic conditions.]
  • abstractbill 16y ago
    Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data. And if you've been coding since eight, you should also know that it takes only one counterexample to disprove a claim that X always implies Y.
  • csbrooks 16y ago
    I've just personally known so many professional programmers who grew up in a barely-middle-class household. Myself included. (Not that one more anecdote is needed, but I remember getting a Commodore computer one Christmas, and getting a hard drive the next Christmas, and the whole thing was hooked up to an old black and white TV.) Also, I've worked with some good programmers who learned to program in college. Yes, the competition is tough, but that's because programmers tend to be smart, not because they've been programming since they were 8, necessarily. The premise of the article just completely
  • kd0amg 16y ago
    Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data. And that enjoying a privilege despite limited resources doesn't make it not a privilege. And that most of them relied on decisions made by an adult, not by the future hacker (parents stretching their budgets, teachers/schools offering use of their computers, etc.).
• mcs 16y ago
  I'm going to be that guy, but I disagree with that as well. I lived in a very poor area in Southeast Texas and built my first computer (literally) from junk parts I found in ditches. I had a little help but it was pretty easy to figure out since everything had notches to make sure everything goes in the right place. I was 8, coincidence here. With a pirated Windows 98se from my mom's boyfriend at the time, it worked out alright. I tied up my mom's phone line with netzero, and that's when I started my adventure into the web. Edit: For clarification, I had built a 233mhz machine with 32mB of ram. I put 98se on it because I hadn't learned of linux yet, and it probably would have been too much for me at that time anyway. Ubuntu didn't exist. Around age 10 we finally got DSL, and by that time I had gathered up enough money to build a "real" machine, with an Athlon XP. Again, with all pirated software. Software piracy enables more to younger poor people than your parents being wealthy in my opinion. Not saying it's right, but it sure allowed me to do things I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. That article is more relevant for people that grew up in the 80s, when hardware was less available than it is today. I started my adventure in the 2000s. I'm 18 now, work for a startup, and I have quite a little nestegg from social marketing apps I've built in the last few years. Nothing my family did really had any effect on my interest in computers.
• Qz 16y ago
  I was hacking since before I was 8, and my family wasn't well off back then (although my dad's computer skills did get us to that point many years later). Of course, that young hacking still hasn't gotten me anywhere special yet at the age of 27. If you read the article though, it's more directly addressing the issue that computing as a male geeky hobby at a young age has shaped and defined the current computing culture, and that is undeniably true. Changing, yes, but not changed enough, yet.
• mgenzel 16y ago
  Ok, I'll add my anecdote too. Hacking != Having a personal computer. I started programming on my 3rd grade (required-to-have) programmable calculator (that had 10 steps & comparison to 0 only). Then, my father showed me Pascal on his computer at work (and programmers in the 1980s Soviet Union did not upper middle class make; plumbers made more), and I started programming on paper, and bringing in my paper programs to my father's work to "check". Then, the school I went to was a special math school (merit, not privilege) and they got computers (the only school computers in our city then) in my 4th grade. When we came to the United States, we were on welfare, so, no personal computer till I was in college. And yet, the schools had computers, you know. Granted, old macs, but computers. The reason the "anecdote" is relevant is that the article doesn't state any probabilities or historical context here, it's just "If A, then B". There were plenty of periods in America when that couldn't have been true even for most people. E.g., in 1970s, if you were hacking, it didn't mean privilege, just luck in having access somehow. If you're learning to hack _now_ as a child... Come on, pretty much anyone can get access to some type of device now, even if it's just in the library.
• Tichy 16y ago
  Those feminist brains are so warped: "There is a subset of boys and men who burn with a passion for computers and computing. Through the intensity of their interest, they both mark the field as male and enshrine in its culture their preference for single-minded intensity and focus on technology." I am supposed to feel guilty for what? Being intensely interested? Because that is something girls can't do?
• Psyonic 16y ago
  This is true for almost everything. In poor households, the children are generally required to perform more work to help support the household. For example, the cleaning lady at my work brings her son with her to help... can't be more than 14. Even if he had a computer, thats 2-3 hours everyday that he can't be using it, or practicing basketball, or whatever else he might succeed in. Poor parents also can't pay for coaching, etc. This article boils down to: privileged people are privileged. True, by definition, but also meaningless.
• theprodigy 16y ago
  my parents were middle class, but when I first got a computer my parents were lower middle class and my dad just got his first engineering job. I think it is either social class or your parents worked in tech and wanted you to learn about it.
• blahblahblah 16y ago
  Extending this ridiculous logic to its absurd extreme, clearly we must conclude that Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Hendrix came from socioeconomically privileged families because they managed to get access to expensive musical instruments when they were kids.
• mathgladiator 16y ago
  What in the sam hell is the point of this article? In a nut shell: Life isn't fair, you need to learn to deal with it and stop bitching. The sooner you stop bitching, the sooner you can make strides to provide a better life for your children so they can be well off so some future naive little girl can call them privileged.
• tibbon 16y ago
  I am white, grew up middle classed, able-bodied, raised christian, in the US, had two parents, and I am a man. What am I supposed to do? Should I feel guilty? Should I make all efforts to use affirmative action to always hire women/minorities over men? Should I no longer meet with like-minded people and talk about our experiences in computing? Should I quit my job and go into teaching social studies in public school instead? The article makes a few interesting points, but I am not convinced of the correlation and they are grasping at air. Plenty of us weren't rich kids, and not all rich kids went into technology. Not everyone with a computer at home went into technology either! My younger sister has had a computer available for a longer percentage of her life than me, and isn't in technology either.
• zandorg 16y ago
  First, I skimmed the article and it doesn't surprise me to hear feminist rhetoric like this. My parents are only middle-class and got a Sharp MZ-700 in 1985, when I was 7. It had MS-BASIC (loaded from tape!) but had no decent games. Then, I got a C64 from an aunt and uncle in 1987, and it was great. A disk drive and freezer cartridge in 1988 and I learned 6502 programming. So I was hacking since 8, but not especially privileged. Some of my friends had computers too, but they never learned to program. I did. [EDIT] My parents weren't scientists, University educators or or computer scientists as in a lot of Silicon Valley cases.
• potatofish 16y ago
  Class is a false concept created by those who want to keep people stuck in one station in life. Especially those who bemoan those who had some privilege. I wouldn't waste my time arguing with the people who buy into the premise of this article, because they are ideologues who will stop at nothing in their quest to make everyone equally miserable. Pass.