5 ms·

A very refreshing reading to which I fully agree and recognize my self as a hacker now such in a shit job for years. I don't know if I can recover from that sin

by chmike 14y ago

A very refreshing reading to which I fully agree and recognize my self as a hacker now such in a shit job for years. I don't know if I can recover from that since I'm getting 50. I'd love to try working on interesting and challenging problems again. At 15 I built my own computer, at 17 implemented a disassembler for 6502 processor with pokes, and at 19 the symbolic assembler still with pokes. These where saved with tape recorders at the time. At that time I bought a book containing the raw disassembled listing of the ORIC Atmos Basic 'OS'. I spent my free time finding out what each function did and documented it, as fun. It felt like what decoding ADN and genes might feel today I guess. Pure hacking. etc. The reason I "failed" is the lack of entrepreneurial culture in my family and educational context, or meeting a lucky opportunity. There was no Internet at the time which would facilitate meeting other hackers. My advise based on my experience, is if you feel like matching the hacker description of Paul Graham in this essay, go run to find and join other hackers, ASAP !!! Start with open source projects for instance which didn't existed in my time. If you don't do that you'll suffocate and get crunched under the pressure of "mediocracy". It's a concept I had plenty of time to develop based on the analysis of my working context. Maybe one day I'll write an essay about it.

deleted 14y ago
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japhyr 14y ago
I can relate to this perspective. My parents encouraged me to try a number of things when I was young. They encouraged me to read a lot, to get outside, to challenge myself. But every time I started to get really good at something, they encouraged me to back off, often in very subtle ways. I think they were afraid of real success, or afraid of a big failure on my part. It took a long time to recognize this, and a long time to fully break away from this. My father was a software engineer from the 70's-90's, and he passed away last year. It was really sad to go through his computer, and see the project which he'd been working on in his retirement, knowing it would never see the light of day. He never learned the "release early, release often" concept. The positive side of this is the new motivation I have to make sure I finish projects. I do not want to watch my technical skills go to waste. This is especially important to me, because my day job is teaching, not programming. So all of my programming consists of side projects, the easiest things to leave unfinished. It also inspires me to not fear my son's failures, in fact I want to teach him that you have to fail in order to succeed significantly. Some of my heroes in life are the programmers who have remained relevant throughout their entire lives. It's interesting growing older. I am just as impressed by technology as I was when I was a kid, but I am much more focused on what we do with that technology.

by chmike 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

japhyr 14y ago

I can relate to this perspective. My parents encouraged me to try a number of things when I was young. They encouraged me to read a lot, to get outside, to challenge myself. But every time I started to get really good at something, they encouraged me to back off, often in very subtle ways. I think they were afraid of real success, or afraid of a big failure on my part. It took a long time to recognize this, and a long time to fully break away from this. My father was a software engineer from the 70's-90's, and he passed away last year. It was really sad to go through his computer, and see the project which he'd been working on in his retirement, knowing it would never see the light of day. He never learned the "release early, release often" concept. The positive side of this is the new motivation I have to make sure I finish projects. I do not want to watch my technical skills go to waste. This is especially important to me, because my day job is teaching, not programming. So all of my programming consists of side projects, the easiest things to leave unfinished. It also inspires me to not fear my son's failures, in fact I want to teach him that you have to fail in order to succeed significantly. Some of my heroes in life are the programmers who have remained relevant throughout their entire lives. It's interesting growing older. I am just as impressed by technology as I was when I was a kid, but I am much more focused on what we do with that technology.