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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 w

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.

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.