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I don’t know. This seems overly harsh, and a pretty classic case of othering people who are different than the author. For example, I’m pretty sure a “hacker”

by ahuth 7y ago

I don’t know. This seems overly harsh, and a pretty classic case of othering people who are different than the author. For example, I’m pretty sure a “hacker” could learn at Khan Academy. In fact, considering anything other than someone’s skill seems somehow anti-hacker.

kedean 7y ago
> In fact, considering anything other than someone’s skill seems somehow anti-hacker. The term hacker was never about pure skill or knowledge, it's about ethos and mentality. A fast implementation is nothing if it doesn't carry an interesting twist that got it there, for example.
- ahuth 7y ago
  True. Guess I meant that educational background doesn’t seem like an important thing for someone’s “hackerness”. Having the skill/knowledge/experience/taste is more important than how you got it.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Twist, or a lot of trial-and-error, happy accidents and incremental improvements. Reminds me in undergrad when architecting a MIC-1 microcode implementation: - I built a macro-instruction profiling emulator to Huffman encode the micro-instructions from all of the sample programs. - Every micro-instruction served several purposes (it was similar to VLIW but shorter). - I used progressive decoding to save micro-ops. Then, the resulting project was not only the shortest micro-code by far (37 micro-ops long) but significantly faster in terms of total micro-ops executed than the next submission. Note 0: I refuse to call myself a "hacker," it would be like referring to myself with a title like "king" or "lord" in the third-person. Note 1: I first learned to code without manuals per se or the internet, but sitting in front of the incredibly-complete and useable Turbo Pascal IDE and obsessively trial-and-error-ing. Then adding inline assembly, Borland C++, and so on.
weare138 7y ago
I think the OP is using hyperbole for effect, I don't think that statement is meant to be taken literally. The difference is things like Khan Academy is where hackers start but where coders stop.

by ahuth 7y ago

kedean 7y ago

> In fact, considering anything other than someone’s skill seems somehow anti-hacker. The term hacker was never about pure skill or knowledge, it's about ethos and mentality. A fast implementation is nothing if it doesn't carry an interesting twist that got it there, for example.

ahuth 7y ago
True. Guess I meant that educational background doesn’t seem like an important thing for someone’s “hackerness”. Having the skill/knowledge/experience/taste is more important than how you got it.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Twist, or a lot of trial-and-error, happy accidents and incremental improvements. Reminds me in undergrad when architecting a MIC-1 microcode implementation: - I built a macro-instruction profiling emulator to Huffman encode the micro-instructions from all of the sample programs. - Every micro-instruction served several purposes (it was similar to VLIW but shorter). - I used progressive decoding to save micro-ops. Then, the resulting project was not only the shortest micro-code by far (37 micro-ops long) but significantly faster in terms of total micro-ops executed than the next submission. Note 0: I refuse to call myself a "hacker," it would be like referring to myself with a title like "king" or "lord" in the third-person. Note 1: I first learned to code without manuals per se or the internet, but sitting in front of the incredibly-complete and useable Turbo Pascal IDE and obsessively trial-and-error-ing. Then adding inline assembly, Borland C++, and so on.

weare138 7y ago

I think the OP is using hyperbole for effect, I don't think that statement is meant to be taken literally. The difference is things like Khan Academy is where hackers start but where coders stop.