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Using the word hacked to describe this irks me. A hack implies some visceral and ingrained knowledge that shouldn't be discernable from magic to the uninitiated
by richo 14y ago
Using the word hacked to describe this irks me. A hack implies some visceral and ingrained knowledge that shouldn't be discernable from magic to the uninitiated.
This is a timetable. It's shiny and all, but it's not as though I'm staring blankly at it trying to work out how you achieved such perfection.
- kamaal 14y agoNo, it is a hack. 'Time table' you see is a finished product of months of various schedule attempts, taking feedback, course correcting and that cycle. Just because the it comes packed, it doesn't mean some one did in one monolithic strike.
- richo 14y agoMy point isn't that I could smash this out in an afternoon (Noone could, obviously. Doing something like this takes tons of trial and error). My point was just that, it's almost entirely trial and error. This isn't the culmination of a drastic change in our understanding of sleep cycles and time allocation, it's just something that works for this guy. I just think it's blown out of proportion, all things considered.
- CKKim 14y agoI'm broadly with you on this and upvoted both your comments, but I don't feel quite strongly enough to call him out. I find more and more that "hack" is used figuratively not only in the way you describe but also in the "hacking down a tree" or "hack writer" sense. Before everyone rushes in and says "this is Hacker News, we all know which version we mean", I'd like to point out how often the phrase "hacked together" is used to describe work in our field done in a somewhat scrappy or unpolished fashion that nevertheless gets the job done. If I'm to give him the benefit of the doubt, I think "I've hacked this productivity schedule quite a lot" is just about alright, but boldly describing it as "a hack" is a little too far.