4 ms·

I agree, except: hackers ⊈ developers Hackers are not optimizing for performance or readability. I've watched a few penetration testers at work - they ha

by polemic 14y ago

I agree, except: hackers ⊈ developers Hackers are not optimizing for performance or readability. I've watched a few penetration testers at work - they have to have a very broad knowledge base and work at speed. They're not sitting around wondering if their query is going to work in 1s or 0.1s - it just doesn't matter. Awesome to see 'real' sql in action though.

rbanffy 14y ago
> Hackers are not optimizing for performance or readability. Speak for yourself ;-)
- polemic 14y ago
  I'm not a hacker, so I can't. FYI I'm referring to 'trying to break into a system, possibility illegally, with time pressure, hackers', rather than HackerNews hackers. Which I thought was reasonably obvious from the context. If you're actually trying to crack a system, you're generally trying a lot of different things very rapidly. Tweaking performance and nicely formatting code you're going to immediately discard is... a misappropriation of resources.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    Sorry if I look harsh, but this is not the meaning of "hacker" I like to see promoted. On the movie, also, the girl was not trying to crack into a computer - she seemingly had full MySQL console access.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I think that ship has sailed, and we just have to use context to disambiguate.
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        I prefer to think of 'hack' and its variants as neutral terms that can, in context be either good ('Look what I hacked together!') or bad ('They hacked into the servers'). (Actually, the way usually explain it to non-techies: duct tape. Everyone understands what duct tape is meant for: it won't necessarily win any awards for style[1], but it's powerful, and it sure as heck gets the job done in a pinch, and quickly too! I find that analogy generally holds well enough, whether we're talking about black-hat hacking or 'real' hacking.) [1] Most of the time, that is: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=duct%20tape%20clothes&revid=34095750&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1363&bih=630&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=-0nIT4yTA5P06AHstPH1Dw http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=duct%20tape%20cloth...
scott_s 14y ago
And I agree, as long as we also agree that: hackers ∩ developers ≠ ∅ (The set of all hackers are not a strict subset of the set of all developers, but it's also true that some hackers - yes, in the breaking-in-to-something sense - are developers.)
- warmwaffles 14y ago
  tis a sad day when I understand these symbols and chuckle :(

by polemic 14y ago

rbanffy 14y ago

> Hackers are not optimizing for performance or readability. Speak for yourself ;-)

polemic 14y ago
I'm not a hacker, so I can't. FYI I'm referring to 'trying to break into a system, possibility illegally, with time pressure, hackers', rather than HackerNews hackers. Which I thought was reasonably obvious from the context. If you're actually trying to crack a system, you're generally trying a lot of different things very rapidly. Tweaking performance and nicely formatting code you're going to immediately discard is... a misappropriation of resources.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Sorry if I look harsh, but this is not the meaning of "hacker" I like to see promoted. On the movie, also, the girl was not trying to crack into a computer - she seemingly had full MySQL console access.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I think that ship has sailed, and we just have to use context to disambiguate.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      I prefer to think of 'hack' and its variants as neutral terms that can, in context be either good ('Look what I hacked together!') or bad ('They hacked into the servers'). (Actually, the way usually explain it to non-techies: duct tape. Everyone understands what duct tape is meant for: it won't necessarily win any awards for style[1], but it's powerful, and it sure as heck gets the job done in a pinch, and quickly too! I find that analogy generally holds well enough, whether we're talking about black-hat hacking or 'real' hacking.) [1] Most of the time, that is: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=duct%20tape%20clothes&revid=34095750&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1363&bih=630&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=-0nIT4yTA5P06AHstPH1Dw http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=duct%20tape%20cloth...

scott_s 14y ago

And I agree, as long as we also agree that: hackers ∩ developers ≠ ∅ (The set of all hackers are not a strict subset of the set of all developers, but it's also true that some hackers - yes, in the breaking-in-to-something sense - are developers.)

warmwaffles 14y ago
tis a sad day when I understand these symbols and chuckle :(