Actually, I thought the last part was the most interesting. Yeah, I know most people on 'Hacker News' are either, a) the true academic "hacker" who are offende

Actually, I thought the last part was the most interesting. Yeah, I know most people on 'Hacker News' are either, a) the true academic "hacker" who are offended about Joel Spolsky's sacrilegious comments about Haskell and Prolog (he insulted automatic program proofs), b) the web 2.0 "hackers" who scoff at Joel's mundane bug-tracker software (he doesn't make social network software). But what I have taken away from Joel's whole article and the classes and companies he had worked at is this: true CS people are misunderstood by the authorities of the world. On one hand, the authorities in the ivory tower expect us to prove that our programs work, but don't actually care how the program look or run in the real world. On the other hand, the authorities in the corporate board-room expect us to use standard toools and off-the-shelf solutions (always about the bottom-line), but don't actually care about how the program look or run in the real world. So what is a hacker to do, but to do what every single true artist have done, to trailblaze his/her own path; and this is what Joel Spolsky/Steve Jobs/Brin&Page & Company exactly did.