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It's funny, I sometimes feel like I am the only one on Hacker News who isn't an actual hacker, nor have any knowledge in field. I'm just a guy with a general, i

by MrJagil 13y ago

It's funny, I sometimes feel like I am the only one on Hacker News who isn't an actual hacker, nor have any knowledge in field. I'm just a guy with a general, intellectual curiosity and HN somewhat satisfies that. I'm a recording/mixing/mastering engineer and I study philosophy. For some reason I am drawn to the tech scene. It is very strange surfing this site, having to disregard 80% of the links on the front page. I mean, in the beginning, every second word i read was completely incomprehensible to me (ajax, kernels, clojure, get, git, whatever). Yet I've stuck around for years..

ntaso 13y ago
Did you read up on all the stuff you didn't know or do you still dismiss them? Ever bothered learning how to code?
- aidos 13y ago
  That sort of sounded snarky but I'm not sure if it was meant to. HN is a good place to get educated about a subject through the medium of debate. I know it's a bit of an echo chamber etc, but you can learn a lot here. Frequently I read a article posted here and have an opinion only to see it challenged back and forth by people who know the field well. Philosophy and deep mathematics collide somewhere alone the line so you're probably not that far away in your studies :) Some years ago I coaxed my brother into jumping from a philosophy degree straight into mathematical logic (he went on to drop out of a PhD in category theory).
  - ntaso 13y ago
    Oh sorry, didn't mean to sound snarky. It was a genuine question. I was just wondering how reading HN had an impact on my parent poster in terms of "computer words" or coding skills that he didn't understand before.
    - MrJagil 13y ago
      Hey ntaso, Actually I am now studying Computer Science as a minor (philosophy still being my major) at my university (we have a very flexible program here in Denmark). I find it very difficult, but also very rewarding. And yes, I actually have tried to learn to code. First through Zed Shaw's Python book, then through some youtube videos but the big hurdle for me has always been how to _publish_ my stuff. It's all great fun that I can make some command line stuff, or write some JS/HTML but I was never explained how to actually do all the basic steps of having a website. I.e. domain names, servers, everything. I felt like i was playing with legos by drawing them on paper.
      - ntaso 13y ago
        Nice :) Then good luck to your studies. You don't have to be a sysadmin to publish your stuff. If you have a few hours, try to get a VPS to mess around. Some hosters offer different software packages to start with. Install something like Debian in minimal version (no LAMP stack) and follow a few tutorials on how to install and configure Apache + SSL-certs, PHP, MySQL, configure sshd, maybe an FTP server and an email server. This will take some time in the beginning. You won't remember everything later and it's not important to internalize the Apache config. It's just to get a feel for the environment. The next time you have to publish something, you at least know that there's something like virtual hosts in Apache and roughly how to configure them. It's no magic ;)
lkrubner 13y ago
Rich Hickey created the Clojure programming language and he has the same background as you. In school, he focused on music, and his creative energy was directed at music composition. There is a mountain of anecdotal evidence suggesting a link between the type of mind that creates music and the type of mind that creates software. After school Hickey got a job at a music studio, and it was there that he first encountered computers. See here: http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/ http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/ Fogus: What drew you to programming? Hickey: I was running a recording studio and got a computer for it. I was intrigued by what it could do—this was in the relatively early days of MIDI—and filled with the possibilities of what it might do. So I taught myself C and assembly language and started writing music software. I was immediately hooked.

by MrJagil 13y ago

ntaso 13y ago

Did you read up on all the stuff you didn't know or do you still dismiss them? Ever bothered learning how to code?

aidos 13y ago
That sort of sounded snarky but I'm not sure if it was meant to. HN is a good place to get educated about a subject through the medium of debate. I know it's a bit of an echo chamber etc, but you can learn a lot here. Frequently I read a article posted here and have an opinion only to see it challenged back and forth by people who know the field well. Philosophy and deep mathematics collide somewhere alone the line so you're probably not that far away in your studies :) Some years ago I coaxed my brother into jumping from a philosophy degree straight into mathematical logic (he went on to drop out of a PhD in category theory).
- ntaso 13y ago
  Oh sorry, didn't mean to sound snarky. It was a genuine question. I was just wondering how reading HN had an impact on my parent poster in terms of "computer words" or coding skills that he didn't understand before.
  - MrJagil 13y ago
    Hey ntaso, Actually I am now studying Computer Science as a minor (philosophy still being my major) at my university (we have a very flexible program here in Denmark). I find it very difficult, but also very rewarding. And yes, I actually have tried to learn to code. First through Zed Shaw's Python book, then through some youtube videos but the big hurdle for me has always been how to _publish_ my stuff. It's all great fun that I can make some command line stuff, or write some JS/HTML but I was never explained how to actually do all the basic steps of having a website. I.e. domain names, servers, everything. I felt like i was playing with legos by drawing them on paper.
    - ntaso 13y ago
      Nice :) Then good luck to your studies. You don't have to be a sysadmin to publish your stuff. If you have a few hours, try to get a VPS to mess around. Some hosters offer different software packages to start with. Install something like Debian in minimal version (no LAMP stack) and follow a few tutorials on how to install and configure Apache + SSL-certs, PHP, MySQL, configure sshd, maybe an FTP server and an email server. This will take some time in the beginning. You won't remember everything later and it's not important to internalize the Apache config. It's just to get a feel for the environment. The next time you have to publish something, you at least know that there's something like virtual hosts in Apache and roughly how to configure them. It's no magic ;)

lkrubner 13y ago

Rich Hickey created the Clojure programming language and he has the same background as you. In school, he focused on music, and his creative energy was directed at music composition. There is a mountain of anecdotal evidence suggesting a link between the type of mind that creates music and the type of mind that creates software. After school Hickey got a job at a music studio, and it was there that he first encountered computers. See here: http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/ http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/ Fogus: What drew you to programming? Hickey: I was running a recording studio and got a computer for it. I was intrigued by what it could do—this was in the relatively early days of MIDI—and filled with the possibilities of what it might do. So I taught myself C and assembly language and started writing music software. I was immediately hooked.