[Haskell-cafe] What is a hacker? [was: Mozart versus Beethoven]

[Benjamin Franksen]

Kirsten Chevalier wrote:
 On 12/12/06, Patrick Mulder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 PS  I like the idea of a book Hakell for Hackers
 
 Maybe Haskell for People Who Want to Be Hackers? 

I would never buy a book with such a title, even if I didn't have the
slightest clue about programming. However Haskell for Hackers is cool.

 (Since, of course, 
 one should never apply the term hacker to oneself.)

Who told you that? Calling oneself 'hacker' is a sign of healthy
self-respect; to the contrary, I don't know anyone who would call
themselves wannabe-hacker.

 I'm not sure 
 whether it's best to aim at people who might be already hackers who
 want to learn Haskell, or people who are already programmers who want
 to be Haskell hackers, in particular. I suppose that the first group
 of people is probably larger.

Being a hacker is a matter of attitude and self-definition more than
knowledge and experience. A hacker, even if young and lacking experience,
reads books for hackers (if at all) not 'how do I become a hacker' books.
The attitude is 'gimme the knowledge so i can go ahead and start doing real
stuff', not 'oh, there is so much to learn, maybe after 10 years of study
and hard work people will finally call me a hacker'.

Cheers
Ben

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] What is a hacker? [was: Mozart versus Beethoven]

[Kirsten Chevalier]

On 12/14/06, Benjamin Franksen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Kirsten Chevalier wrote:
 (Since, of course,
 one should never apply the term hacker to oneself.)

Who told you that?


The Jargon File. But yes, I can anticipate more or less all of the
possible responses to *that*, and, point taken.


Calling oneself 'hacker' is a sign of healthy
self-respect; to the contrary, I don't know anyone who would call
themselves wannabe-hacker.



Well, I hope so, since I contradict my own advice and call myself a
hacker anyway :-)


Being a hacker is a matter of attitude and self-definition more than
knowledge and experience. A hacker, even if young and lacking experience,
reads books for hackers (if at all) not 'how do I become a hacker' books.
The attitude is 'gimme the knowledge so i can go ahead and start doing real
stuff', not 'oh, there is so much to learn, maybe after 10 years of study
and hard work people will finally call me a hacker'.



Very reasonable. Very sane.

Speaking of the term hacker and of various subcultures, the way in
which Haskell and the open-source community seem to have met each
other this year just makes me melt with joy. I know it wasn't like
that six years ago; the Haskell community was small, and there wasn't
exactly such a thing as the open-source community (and please let's
not have a free software vs. open source debate, because I've
heard that all before, too). I don't know exactly what happened in the
meantime, besides the miracle of this vast series of tubes that we
cann the Internet, but someone should really be writing a sociology
paper about it.

Cheers,
Kirsten

--
Kirsten Chevalier* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Often in error, never in doubt
The geeks shall inherit the earth. -- Karl Lehenbauer
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