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I remember a time when just about everybody in my world who laid hands on _Hackers_ loved it. So did I. Having reread it more recently, much later in my caree
by kemitchell 5y ago
I remember a time when just about everybody in my world who laid hands on _Hackers_ loved it. So did I.
Having reread it more recently, much later in my career, I was not no smitten.
- nuclearnice3 5y agoWould you care to provide some of the reasons for either opinion? (Or both!)
- mwcampbell 5y agoThis post exposes some problems with what Levy called the "hacker ethic": https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/07/03/Programmer-Power.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/07/03/Programmer-Power.h...
- dane-pgp 5y agoThat post is a word salad of unsubstantiated vague name-calling. > In the most intuitive case, the fact that the maker of a product, service, or program needs to recoup costs or earn fair compensation becomes irrelevant, if not overtly despised. The classic "Open source will never be popular, because people have to get paid" argument. > Software people, and their progress, über alles. ... Utopian communalism on the supply side, among programmers So free software developers are literally Commie-Nazis? Got it. > Often these strike a borderline millenialist, free-in-the-promised-land tone. Oh, and religious extremists too, I see. > The usual rules about permission, compensation, respect, and so on don’t apply, insofar as they’d apply to those making software. Also, people who use free software are all thieves and pirates, apparently.