4 ms·

> I've thought perhaps Mythical Man Month and How To Become A Hacker (Eric Raymond essay) but not sure they're quite right. Please don't recommend Eric Raymond

> I've thought perhaps Mythical Man Month and How To Become A Hacker (Eric Raymond essay) but not sure they're quite right. Please don't recommend Eric Raymond's work to people. > technical founder wondering what reading to recommend to a business focused founder for them to grok the hacker mindset What does "the hacker mindset" mean to you? If you ask me: The most important thing about a hacker mindset is that it must exist outside of technology. A hacker mindset is not a "techy" mindset, it's something far more sublime, and is portable across different fields. Hacking is about creativity and problem solving, but not in a formalized way. That doesn't always involve computers and related technology. Hacking should be fun, regardless of what industry or specialization it manifests in (which doesn't always translate well in business settings). That isn't something that you're going to inject into someone by recommending them read a book. They have to seek it out for themselves. Without curiosity, hackers do not exist. If they're going to be able to understand the mindset without having experienced it themselves, you might as well just share my comment here with them. If it sinks in, great! If not, I don't believe a few hundred pages of prose will have a different outcome.

dang 6y ago
Please review and stick to the site guidelines here. Note this one: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fouric 6y ago
> Please don't recommend Eric Raymond's work to people. Why? Do you have some problem with his advice on how to ask questions[1]? [1] http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
- some_furry 6y ago
  > Why? Because promoting ESR's work to people has the unfortunate side-effect of elevating ESR's prestige. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15513086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15513086 for more on why ESR is bad. > Do you have some problem with his advice on how to ask questions[1]? No, I think he's a bad person and we do our entire industry a disservice by continuing to elevate his status. Find better heroes, should you even want heroes.
  - derefr 6y ago
    It does our industry an even-greater disservice to base prestige on great works rather than on character. We can get past the halo effect, if we try. If I recall, there's a Buddhist proverb, where a pig is held up as a good example of enlightenment: it will happily pick truffles out of mud, taking the truffle and leaving the mud behind. It doesn't develop an opinion on the mud in the process; the truffle grew from the mud, but the mud isn't relevant to the truffle. It doesn't venerate/privilege/respect the mud—but nor does it find it disgusting. It's just mud. Irrelevant. Not food. The truffle, clean of mud, stands on its own. The truffle is a necessary part of a creature's mental model, insofar as it experiences hunger; but the mud is not.
  - fouric 6y ago
    You think the side-effect of elevating ESR's status outweighs the value of the ideas themselves?
    - some_furry 6y ago
      It does. Especially since there are a lot of hackers in the world who can articulate the same ideas better and with less racism.
lwhalen 6y ago
What's wrong with ESR's work? I know the man himself can sometimes be controversial, but many of us came up on his works like The Jargon File, Cathedral and Bazaar, etc.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  The Jargon File is almost entirely the work of others, in particular Guy Steele. ESR's contributions to it were largely self-serving, e.g. the addition of terms like "anti-idiotarianism" which had little usage outside right-wing political circles (including ESR himself, of course), and he hasn't updated it at all since the early 2000s.

dang 6y ago

Please review and stick to the site guidelines here. Note this one: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fouric 6y ago

> Please don't recommend Eric Raymond's work to people. Why? Do you have some problem with his advice on how to ask questions[1]? [1] http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

some_furry 6y ago
> Why? Because promoting ESR's work to people has the unfortunate side-effect of elevating ESR's prestige. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15513086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15513086 for more on why ESR is bad. > Do you have some problem with his advice on how to ask questions[1]? No, I think he's a bad person and we do our entire industry a disservice by continuing to elevate his status. Find better heroes, should you even want heroes.
- derefr 6y ago
  It does our industry an even-greater disservice to base prestige on great works rather than on character. We can get past the halo effect, if we try. If I recall, there's a Buddhist proverb, where a pig is held up as a good example of enlightenment: it will happily pick truffles out of mud, taking the truffle and leaving the mud behind. It doesn't develop an opinion on the mud in the process; the truffle grew from the mud, but the mud isn't relevant to the truffle. It doesn't venerate/privilege/respect the mud—but nor does it find it disgusting. It's just mud. Irrelevant. Not food. The truffle, clean of mud, stands on its own. The truffle is a necessary part of a creature's mental model, insofar as it experiences hunger; but the mud is not.
- fouric 6y ago
  You think the side-effect of elevating ESR's status outweighs the value of the ideas themselves?
  - some_furry 6y ago
    It does. Especially since there are a lot of hackers in the world who can articulate the same ideas better and with less racism.

lwhalen 6y ago

What's wrong with ESR's work? I know the man himself can sometimes be controversial, but many of us came up on his works like The Jargon File, Cathedral and Bazaar, etc.

duskwuff 6y ago
The Jargon File is almost entirely the work of others, in particular Guy Steele. ESR's contributions to it were largely self-serving, e.g. the addition of terms like "anti-idiotarianism" which had little usage outside right-wing political circles (including ESR himself, of course), and he hasn't updated it at all since the early 2000s.