6 ms·

My best advice to any budding hacker would be for them to find a job as unrelated to computers as possible, but which leaves them with enough free time to tinke

My best advice to any budding hacker would be for them to find a job as unrelated to computers as possible, but which leaves them with enough free time to tinker with whatever currently tickles their fancy.

markus_zhang 6y ago
Pretty much what I'm doing but I do hope for a coding job...
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  Like most things, hacking is a lot like angling in the respect that it's a fun, relaxing and rewarding pastime, but most often neither of these when depended upon for survival.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    Ha... boy this describes several phases of my life (with lessons learned) remarkably well. Thanks for the chuckle. Poker, sports betting arbitrage, bug bounties... All were fun before I tried making them my day job.
qzw 6y ago
I’m sure this works for some people in the right context, but so many great OG hackers were career computer scientists and engineers. I mean, people like the original Xerox PARC guys, Woz, Cerf, Diffie, the RSA guys, TBL, and too many more to name. They were all working in jobs or started companies that allowed them to devote the bulk of their time and energy to hacking and building. There are only so many hours in the day. If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion, it’s pretty hard to get the best out of yourself. And forget it if you want to have any other kind of “life” besides. Edit: readability
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  Most of those guys operated under circumstances vastly different from today. If you can land a job like those at PARC or Bell Labs, then yes, "carreer hacking" is certainly possible. Considering how many IT professionals there are now and how few there were back then, I'd say those kinds of jobs are even more scarce now than they used to be. It's not impossible, but it's not a realistic expectation. > If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion A programming job is likely to be as far from any kind of hacking passion as any other, with the added disadvantage of possibly poisoning the well, so to speak.
  - seiferteric 6y ago
    Imagine how different being a programmer was before the distractions of the internet. You might not even be in front of a screen all the time. I am sure a lot of time was spent preparing punch cards and in front of chalk boards. Overall I bet it was much better for mental health.
    - ff317 6y ago
      Yes, this is a major factor that's often overlooked. I grew up doing child-level hacking in the 80s and then got into real hacking in the 90s as the commercial internet was first starting to blossom. While the reality I inhabit now as a programmer is dominated by the Internet, my habits are more like pre-Internet programmers. If I were to make an accurate account of all the time and energy that goes into my most successful and well-engineered software products, the majority of the productive time happens "offline" from the Internet and/or even my laptop's screen. I spend a ton of time turning the abstract parts of the problem over in my head while doing "nothing" (or during the mundane tasks of everyday life), and even when I do get in front of a screen, I still spend a ton of time just sketching out notes in a text editor - basically arguing with myself until I've managed to jot down some good conclusions on how the design of a Thing should be done. Most of those notes get thrown away eventually, as they materialize into resultant source code. I have sometimes spent weeks or months turning an idea over in my head or in these textual debates with myself before a line of code is ever written.
skipants 6y ago
That's interesting. Not sure I agree -- being into computers as a kid is what got me into programming. But there's probably more than one way to do it.
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  Not sure why that would be mutually exclusive? Programming doesn’t have to be a dayjob.
dmos62 6y ago
Sounds like you have bad computer job experiences.
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  20+ years on I've had some good, some bad and some occasionally wonderful. It's not a bad profession, as professions go: things are generally very cushy and you can, from time to time, experience the same elation as when exploring on your own (though, for me, it's getting increasingly rare). It's a big difference between sating your own curiosity in a hackeresque way, learning about what interests you, programming whatever the heck you like, and working professionally with software development. If there's a programming job with no specs, no customer demands, no deadlines, no legacy maintenance, no market pressure, no platform preferences or language requirements, please let me know, would you? :)
  - dmos62 6y ago
    Sort of tangential, but I find that when I escape one set of annoyances, another pops up. I don't mean that worse problems are replaced by better problems, but rather that I seem to create them myself. The pain point isn't really in what's required or what's happening, but how I react to things.
  - qorrect 6y ago
    Programming would be awesome without having to mess with customers.
    - sk0g 6y ago
      Unfortunately, we get paid to translate business requirements to a language a computer can understand. Is that programming? Maybe, but a limited, rigid subset, that I at least don't find particularly stimulating.
zitterbewegung 6y ago
I try to balance both out having a day job and having stuff that motivates me for learning and or Side projects. Even though I take breaks on my side projects I think you can be an OK hacker but, if you are able to get a large amount of free time making around ~$50 then I would agree with you.

markus_zhang 6y ago

Pretty much what I'm doing but I do hope for a coding job...

arexxbifs 6y ago
Like most things, hacking is a lot like angling in the respect that it's a fun, relaxing and rewarding pastime, but most often neither of these when depended upon for survival.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  Ha... boy this describes several phases of my life (with lessons learned) remarkably well. Thanks for the chuckle. Poker, sports betting arbitrage, bug bounties... All were fun before I tried making them my day job.

qzw 6y ago

I’m sure this works for some people in the right context, but so many great OG hackers were career computer scientists and engineers. I mean, people like the original Xerox PARC guys, Woz, Cerf, Diffie, the RSA guys, TBL, and too many more to name. They were all working in jobs or started companies that allowed them to devote the bulk of their time and energy to hacking and building. There are only so many hours in the day. If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion, it’s pretty hard to get the best out of yourself. And forget it if you want to have any other kind of “life” besides. Edit: readability

arexxbifs 6y ago
Most of those guys operated under circumstances vastly different from today. If you can land a job like those at PARC or Bell Labs, then yes, "carreer hacking" is certainly possible. Considering how many IT professionals there are now and how few there were back then, I'd say those kinds of jobs are even more scarce now than they used to be. It's not impossible, but it's not a realistic expectation. > If you’re devoting a third of it to something completely unrelated to your passion A programming job is likely to be as far from any kind of hacking passion as any other, with the added disadvantage of possibly poisoning the well, so to speak.
- seiferteric 6y ago
  Imagine how different being a programmer was before the distractions of the internet. You might not even be in front of a screen all the time. I am sure a lot of time was spent preparing punch cards and in front of chalk boards. Overall I bet it was much better for mental health.
  - ff317 6y ago
    Yes, this is a major factor that's often overlooked. I grew up doing child-level hacking in the 80s and then got into real hacking in the 90s as the commercial internet was first starting to blossom. While the reality I inhabit now as a programmer is dominated by the Internet, my habits are more like pre-Internet programmers. If I were to make an accurate account of all the time and energy that goes into my most successful and well-engineered software products, the majority of the productive time happens "offline" from the Internet and/or even my laptop's screen. I spend a ton of time turning the abstract parts of the problem over in my head while doing "nothing" (or during the mundane tasks of everyday life), and even when I do get in front of a screen, I still spend a ton of time just sketching out notes in a text editor - basically arguing with myself until I've managed to jot down some good conclusions on how the design of a Thing should be done. Most of those notes get thrown away eventually, as they materialize into resultant source code. I have sometimes spent weeks or months turning an idea over in my head or in these textual debates with myself before a line of code is ever written.

skipants 6y ago

That's interesting. Not sure I agree -- being into computers as a kid is what got me into programming. But there's probably more than one way to do it.

arexxbifs 6y ago
Not sure why that would be mutually exclusive? Programming doesn’t have to be a dayjob.

dmos62 6y ago

Sounds like you have bad computer job experiences.

arexxbifs 6y ago
20+ years on I've had some good, some bad and some occasionally wonderful. It's not a bad profession, as professions go: things are generally very cushy and you can, from time to time, experience the same elation as when exploring on your own (though, for me, it's getting increasingly rare). It's a big difference between sating your own curiosity in a hackeresque way, learning about what interests you, programming whatever the heck you like, and working professionally with software development. If there's a programming job with no specs, no customer demands, no deadlines, no legacy maintenance, no market pressure, no platform preferences or language requirements, please let me know, would you? :)
- dmos62 6y ago
  Sort of tangential, but I find that when I escape one set of annoyances, another pops up. I don't mean that worse problems are replaced by better problems, but rather that I seem to create them myself. The pain point isn't really in what's required or what's happening, but how I react to things.
- qorrect 6y ago
  Programming would be awesome without having to mess with customers.
  - sk0g 6y ago
    Unfortunately, we get paid to translate business requirements to a language a computer can understand. Is that programming? Maybe, but a limited, rigid subset, that I at least don't find particularly stimulating.

zitterbewegung 6y ago

I try to balance both out having a day job and having stuff that motivates me for learning and or Side projects. Even though I take breaks on my side projects I think you can be an OK hacker but, if you are able to get a large amount of free time making around ~$50 then I would agree with you.