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You've probably already read this, but for those who haven't, it's a fun read: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/20
by coldtea 3y ago
You've probably already read this, but for those who haven't, it's a fun read: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
- throwaway2037 3y agoI never saw this essay before. Thank you to share. A choice quote: > I blame Eric Raymond and to a lesser extent Dave Winer for bringing this kind of schlock writing onto the Internet. Raymond is the original perpetrator of the "what is a hacker?" essay, in which you quickly begin to understand that a hacker is someone who resembles Eric Raymond. > The whole genre reminds me of the the wooly business books one comes across at airports ("Management secrets of Gengis Khan", the "Lexus and the Olive Tree") that milk a bad analogy for two hundred pages to arrive at the conclusion that people just like the author are pretty great.
- ephemeral-life 3y agoDefinitely a fun read, but the author has an axe to grind with the references to "who gets bitches" and the unnecessary footnotes. Take what you will from it.
- coldtea 3y agoThere's no literal quote about "who gets bitches" or the word bitch at all in the post though. What you refer to is a paragraph about the distinction between programming and painting (meant as a joke counter-argument to PG's essay about how hacking is essentially like painting), which opens like: "Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do". The author (who is on HN, btw, too) does go into a more substantial difference of the nature of the two endeavours too, but the whole post is in a jocking tone. And yes, it has "an axe to grind", but it's not about who gets the girl. It's about taking down essays they consider pompous and self-congratulatory.