Hacker News Reader

Comment by beggi | Hacker News Reader

While surely there are few hackers older than 60 or 70, the history of the personal computer is still too young for the question to be a meaningful indicator of how long people keep hacking. The Altair came out in 1975 meaning that someone that was 20 at the time and started hacking on it right away is only reaching 60 next year. The first mass-market personal computer (the Macintosh) came out in 1984 and working with computers was still a niche at that time. Those hackers that are over 60 now are either super early adopters or those that started hacking late in life, so in any case a very small group. I'm sure there will be plenty of hackers over 60 in a few decades :) - Also, looking forward to fragging and playing Starcraft in the nursing home! :)

View on HN

Then again, my dad, which was a sociology major, bought a vic 20 when it came out, and proceeded to implement a system for bidding on construction contacts in Quick Basic for first the Apricot and later the PC (Because at the time there were no decent software for the task). I believe he took a part-time computer science class at the local college in the 80s prior to writing that piece of software.

He doesn't program any more, but the idea that you'd have to be 20 when you started is just plain wrong. You could've been 40.

He also used to play with meccano and legos, and I remember we built a traversing crane during a Christmas in the mid 80s (on ropes from the living room to the kitchen, a spam of some 7 meters). If you were a hacker soul before personal computing, it'd be quite easy to get into computers (and realize that it would be important).

Of course, I agree with you. It's just by referencing the 20 year old age, I was thinking about the circa age when the wide majority of people start their careers (20-25). But like I said in my original comment, there are those exceptions of cool people that started hacking late in life and your dad is certainly one!

I still think the assumption that hacking started with programming is wrong, there've been countless hackers, they were just generally confined to physical media (eg: engineers). And I don't think making the transition towards software wasn't all that radical for most.

[edit: typos]

Yes of course. I was referring to software hacking like the original post.

Actually, that should be anthropology major, come to think of it.

I am 49, and I was an early Macintosh developer, gaining access to the beta OS at age 17 in 1983. I started programming via college courses in the 5th grade, and had a video game company selling Vic-20 and Commodore 64 games nationwide thru Sears & KMart in '82. Today, I am CEO of www.3D-Avatar-Store.com: a neural net + 3D computer graphics & animation startup.

What does programming have to do with PCs? Computers and programming existed long before that :)

Older people I've known continued to work with what they call "real" computers in the 80's and 90's, not PCs. Mainstream PCs didn't even have multiple processes until the 90's (386).

Well, that programming went mainstream has a lot to do with the PC revolution, as that's what enabled a mass of people to do it for a living. I wasn't saying there weren't exceptions. Of course there are people that started to program before 1975, but I was merely giving a point of reference when PC's started to get mass marketed and when a viable market for programmers started to form. Not a lot of people had access to mainframes :)

The Apple II and Commodore 64 were mass market successes that preceded the Mac. I expect there were others that would qualify. I think the 8086 clones came out at about the same time.

You're right, the Macintosh was the first featuring a graphical user interface and mouse. The point I was making still stands though, hacking was a niche at this time :)

I had seen WIMP (windows icons menus pointers) interfaces before I saw a Mac. BBC Micro I think. No mouse, but keyboard could achieve the same thing. Ok, that was for specific applications, and not the OS that was based on it though.

Yep, they sure existed (for example at Xerox Parc as well), but Macintosh was the first mass marketed one. To be fair, I guess mass marketed is a subjective term :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com