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I think this guide has a good place for children who are interested in computers and get in trouble for messing with their schools network. Many of these kids w
by navait 12y ago
I think this guide has a good place for children who are interested in computers and get in trouble for messing with their schools network. Many of these kids will have absorbed media which does not really understand the diffrence between being a software engineer and breaking into computers. They may not know about the FOSS/unix world. I think giving this to them would do them a lot of good.
My main problem with it is that ESR is unable to differentiate between being a good programmer and being ESR.
Really what we need is a guide written by a prominent member of the FOSS community who can show budding programmers what's out there in modern FOSS(this was written in 1996) without couching it in language designed to sate the author's ego.
- endgame 12y agoSimilarly for How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, which is an article I want to link to people, but when I check that it actually applies I often abort.
- asteroidb612 12y agoI read ESR's How to Become a Hacker about 10 years ago, and it was what turned me from a kid who spent a lot of time on computers and was interested in them into a programmer.
- Delmania 12y ago"My main problem with it is that ESR is unable to differentiate between being a good programmer and being ESR." This line really identifies what my issue with ESR is. I've skimmed over his writings, and he definitely mixes the skill of being a hacker with his own beliefs about what that person should think and how that person should act. That theme definitely runs in his blog - the technical aspects of are great, but there's definitely a lot of humble bragging going on as well as most of the commentors being nothing more than an echo chamber.