Comment by przemoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by przemoc | Hacker News Reader

"My limited and very biased samples suggest that hackers have a much greater intrinsic desire to improve their skills than those in other professions. We want to be ninjas not just because it will mean better-paying and more exciting jobs, but because there is something innately cool about knowing how to properly wield Javascript, Erlang or Clojure."

ENOPARSE. Beginning looked promising, but examples of what is cool quickly spoiled it completely. Hacker is most likely a good programmer, but even very good programmer doesn't have to be a hacker. Seriously, using HTML+CSS+JS, while making over 50% (80%?) of HN content, isn't hacking-related stuff at all. Heck, you can "hack" some HTML/CSS/JS platform differences in particular browsers with some workarounds, but it doesn't make you a hacker. If the things will go on, it looks like a hacker term may become a synonym of the web developer. Or programmer using lesser known languages too. It would be huge slap in the face of real hackers.

Hackers are behind stories like:

- X86 MMU fault handling is turing complete -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5261598

- The 8085's register file reverse engineered -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5314442

- Dalvik patch for Facebook for Android -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5321634

to name a few recent ones.

>Hackers are behind stories like

You are probably a little behind the times. Like 15 years. The term "hacker" has stopped meaning exclusively these kind of guys for agres...

I think that was the parent's point...the term "hacker" has been diluted to where it can mean anything and everything. Just like the "pivot", "traction", etc.

Well, words do change with the times. The world hacker once meant the guy with an axe, hacking things.

But it's not like its diluted to the point where it can mean "anything and everything".

Now, the original meaning that the parent laments (something like the historical MIT hackers), has been long gone (as an exclusive meaning).

All through the late eighties - nineties "hacker" in the mass media meant the computer intruder. Like the movie "Hackers" and all. Geeks have tried for years to get them to use "cracker" instead.

Later (circa 1998-2000), it was mostly re-associated with the OSS crowd, Linux, the Mozilla guys, et al.

Nowadays, it seems to mean the developer in general (when used casually) and the more "adventurous" kind of developer --e.g one that dabbles in multiple languages, knows his Lisp etc (when used in a more positive way).

Perhaps the only kind of developers disqualified by the current use of the terms are "corporate drones", Java/Visual Basic guys making tedious enterprise stuff and the like.

> You are probably a little behind the times. Like 15 years. The term "hacker" has stopped meaning exclusively these kind of guys for agres...

No. What we're dealing here actually is the effect of the urge of wannabe-hacker kids using inflected forms of "hacking" in unheard before ways next to achievements often barely worth mentioning, especially under the "hack" hat.

I'm hacking new code - I'm programming new code.

I'm hacking in a new language - I'm learning new language.

I'm hacker - I'm a bit above average programmer/web developer/whatever.

...

I simply cannot agree to these alleged redefinitions. To be honest, I also don't care if it feels so-15-years-old or so-70s. HN as a community is the last place I would like to see wholeheartedly accepting casual things as hacking. Hacking is about deep, profound understanding of computer-related stuff and things (far from trivial) you're able to achieve thanks to that.

>I simply cannot agree to these alleged redefinitions.

How about the most blatant redefinition -- from "a guy hacking trees with an axe"?

>HN as a community is the last place I would like to see wholeheartedly accepting casual things as hacking.

Well, Paul Graham might have been a great hacker (and Robert Morris!), but HN was built more around an entrepreneurial community (YC et al).

As such, a lot of people here don't do deep hacking stuff. They do simple web services (and sometimes, reading some articles they make it sound like they're doing rocket science). Even the most celebrated of them, Facebook, Instragram, Groupon or what have you, are dead simple stuff, CS wise. There might have been some difficulty in handling their scaling, but that too is hardly a hard problem. (Stuff like what Google and Orbitz do are another matter entirely).

So, seeing that HN has tons of introductory or trivial Node, Mongo and similar articles, why should you expect to see the "old meaning" of hacker here? It's not like it's Lambda the Ultimate.

> How about the most blatant redefinition -- from "a guy hacking trees with an axe"?

I'm not saying that words cannot get new meaning in some new emerging contexts. Languages evolve, that goes without saying. But when people start to deteriorate their meaning within the same context, mostly to be able to use these terms themselves, thus feeling a bit better or cooler (because these terms used to describe exceptional people), then something wrong is happening.

> As such, a lot of people here don't do deep hacking stuff. They do simple web services...

And it's fine, really. I'm not bashing HN community for submitting stories not worth of "hacking" (according to "old meaning", as you named it) emblem (it's really nice when such stories appear, though), because on-topic is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". I'm criticizing overuse of all hack* nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and what not. I believe that most people here can tell the difference between slick and shiny CSS date picker and system emulation done using JS for instance (to stay in the browser realm). Not everyone is like Bellard, but does it mean we need to redefine "hacker" to allow its wider use and prevent covering this term in dust as the time goes? Hell no.

> So, seeing that HN has tons of introductory or trivial Node, Mongo and similar articles, why should you expect to see the "old meaning" of hacker here?

Because it's part of computer-related legacy.

Doing fun things (everyone perceive "fun" differently) doesn't need to be hard and is quite healthy. Sharing and spreading the fun is definitely ok too. But let's not pretend that doing anything fun in CS field is immediately hacking, because it's not. HN is thankfully full of people aware of it, so I'm not afraid about HN future, yet.

I don't think it's an insult to anyone that the meaning of the word has changed. People call themselves hackers in admiration of the kind of hacking you point to. Also, as another commenter pointed out, programmers call themselves hackers to speak to say "I would be programming even if it didn't pay the bills."

If anything I'd say your reverence for the term itself is dangerously close to hero worship, if not outright hero worship. Identifying with the culture of the hackers you're referring to helps us keep our sights on being our best selves and serves as a reminder what kind of work is top notch.

> I don't think it's an insult to anyone that the meaning of the word has changed.

I see that only people clung to their misuse of hacker and related terms are advocating that the meaning has changed. Well, for mass-media hackers are computer criminal, should we acknowledge it and stop using the term in an original computer-related meaning?

Hackers in fact rarely refers to themselves by this term. They are also quite modest and open to any critique, contrary to many boastful youngsters calling themselves "hackers".

> People call themselves hackers in admiration of the kind of hacking you point to.

Hackers admiration is fine, but the logic is flawed. Admiration alone doesn't change you into the one you admire, so it's quite awkward calling oneself someone she or he is not yet, don't you think?

> Also, as another commenter pointed out, programmers call themselves hackers to speak to say "I would be programming even if it didn't pay the bills."

"I would be hacking even if it didn't pay the bills." -> thinking or saying that doesn't make anyone a "hacker", even more if we're talking about "programming".

Hacker - programmer that is not afraid of starving. Amusing definition.

> If anything I'd say your reverence for the term itself is dangerously close to hero worship, if not outright hero worship.

Worship? I call it accuracy.

> Identifying with the culture of the hackers you're referring to helps us keep our sights on being our best selves and serves as a reminder what kind of work is top notch.

Sure, I don't see anything wrong in identifying with (meant as aiming to become part of) the culture of the hackers, but calling myself a hacker just because of my aspirations would be plainly wrong, so I cannot commend such practices.

For you and me, hacking means grokking stuff.

For the mass-media influenced population, who are about 90% of population, hacking means breaking into systems and damaging or controlling them.

Now what you mention is another different redefinition of hacking. Like a watering down effect, going from grokking to simply tinkering to even dabbling something.

I don't like it either, and I would rather have hacker to keep its original meaning, but it is what it is.

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