"Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser."
Nah, the key word there is "hide". Note that eric uses esr a lot...... ;)
For example I always use errant or errantx (and sometimes tmorton166) as my handle. But it's not a hiding thing; it's mostly about ease. Finding my real name, for example, isn't particularly hard and I make little pains to hide it. That is, I think, the difference.
Using a handle is different from being anonymous. Personally I don't really care if the person I'm communicating with is calling themselves john or w4r3zd00d. What I care about is the communication itself and the consistency of the other party.
I regularly converse with people who use an alias and if you participate in discussions around here, you do too.
Use a handle, don't use a handle, I don't care.
Be anonymous and troll, attack people or spew hatred and .. well, I won't care either - my mental filter will just drop you like martian packets.
I think this is inaccurate. _why conceals his identity behind a handle, and few people think of him as a loser. It's not about whether you use a handle or your real name -- it's about what you do with it.
Concealing your identity makes you a loser if you do it so nobody can make you responsible for your acts. That was not _why's case, he did it because of privacy reasons.
I read the hacker-howto around the same time, and the list of languages was the best thing I got out of it, too. I already knew C and C++, so started working with Python. Python was a joy, but while using it for a couple small projects I researched the other languages I would be learning later. I couldn't resist skipping straight to Lisp, and it is still my favorite programming language. Thank you, esr.
"There is perhaps a more general point here. If a language does too much for you, it may be simultaneously a good tool for production and a bad one for learning. It's not only languages that have this problem; web application frameworks like RubyOnRails, CakePHP, Django may make it too easy to reach a superficial sort of understanding that will leave you without resources when you have to tackle a hard problem, or even just debug the solution to an easy one."
"LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot."
Haha, I love that this got downvoted so much. It shows the mentality of some of the people here. Apparently thirst for knowledge and clever ingenuity can be "learned".
I believe thirst for knowledge can be learned. Ask any child (or adult!) who gets their mind blown what they see through a magnifying glass or a telescope. Maybe that's not learning thirst for knowledge so much as kick-starting it, but I think it's close enough.
I'm not sure about clever ingenuity, but it's not a stretch to say that that's a faculty that can be exercised and cultivated, no matter how paltry or weak it is initially. A lot of things can be learned, states of mind included. Ask any Buddhist monk.
in your example thirst for knowledge was not learned, it came naturally. if a person looked throught the telescope and wasn't filled with wonder and curiosity, would you say that was a failure in teaching? no, because some people do not care. they are not naturally curious. also there is a distinction between someone who is curious and someone who is compelled to tinker and learn more due to their curiosity. any normal boy may be curious how his RC car works. a hacker takes it apart and tries to obtain the secret to this mysterious device and what makes it tick. i do not believe you can be shown how to have this trait. you can emulate it, but you gave to really obtain a curiosity about all things unknown. is it possible to develop this trait over time? yes. but i think it has to come naturally, and not by a book or FAQ.
You make a good point. But I think most people, given the right external stimulus, will become aware of a thirst for knowledge. I think it's an open question as to whether anamnesis is real or not, and whether only people with a predisposition toward knowledge can be wakenened to it. Personally, I believe that given an appropriately interesting, tailored goad, anyone can be stimulated to wonder and curiosity, and the concomitant desire to de- and reconstruct. I think a book or an FAQ can be that goad.
"Trying to learn to hack on a Microsoft Windows machine or under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast."
I've developed against Microsoft platforms for many years. I now, in fact, work at Microsoft. I do a lot of deep integration work with Visual Studio and I can tell you that it would be completely impossible without source code access. After working for a few months with source access to all of developer division, xbox, etc., that I never, ever, ever want to develop against a closed platform ever again. Most of our big partners who write VS add-ins do have source code access as well. You basically need it.
That is a completely separate task from learning to develop software.
You need platform source code access if you're doing low-level integration work, which is precisely what you don't do as a beginner.
Windows isn't the best platform for writing software but it's just fine. Python and Emacs work on it just fine, as do MySQL and other important software. Categorically asserting you can't learn how to structure code without having access to terabytes of C code is total fucking bullshit which is why I stand by the original statement.
I agree that is an invalid categorical assertion. To make it explicit: I learned to program (quite well, I hope) on top of closed platforms. However, I suspect that I would have learned faster, better, and more completely by working with open source platforms. My perspective on code has changed dramatically since I've embraced reading other people's code.
As an aside: although my integration work is "low-level", I do not get the opportunity to make changes or additions to the shipping VS bits. I can only file bugs and plead my case. I can't call secret APIs, nor do I gain any special powers other than the weight an @microsoft.com email address carries. I'm developing against the closed platform as all our partners, and non-partner customers.
It is a controversial statement but it would make sense if he elaborated further. One of my first memorable experiences starting out at college was walking into a computer cluster and finding that every machine ran a variant of Red Hat's Linux. I was taken aback by the freedom the OS provide (the ability to customize every bit of your experience using the workstation). I was also positively taken aback by the community that had adopted this system. Right next door to the main cluster was a room occupied by a group of hackers. Their attitude was like nothing I had seen before. Their doors were always open to anyone who had questions about Linux. They wrote software to make using Linux easier at school. You get that same sense of community from Linux users on the web.
The statement doesn't just apply to software. Think about the Arduino. The project has gained a massive following and created a whole new legion of hardware hackers because it is easy to obtain (designs are open source and collaborative in nature) and there is a strong community behind it (probably as a result of it being open source).
When the thread about new types of flagging (e.g. for incivility) came up recently, and people were saying that HN was getting nastier, my first reaction was "what? really?" Guess I was late to the party: I'm noticing it everywhere now. :(
Come on henning. You can make a point better than this - you have for a long time.
You have to have the source of what you are trying to learn. If it's a web framework - sure, you can download the source and work on a Windows machine. But you need to realize you are learning about a different system, and one you have the source to. If you want to figure out how operating systems work - you need to see how one works.
Learning how to use a system or code in a framework is possible with closed-source. You can even get some work done. But it can't be called hacking, because the aim of a hacker is to understand.
Say what you will about esr, but the body cast thing is more true than not.
I learned how to write code using VB and MS Excel, simply because that's what I had at the time. If I had not started with those, I would have never found out that I like programming, and I would never have written code under open-source systems.
Yeah, it's BS. It's the old "only people who do X can be in club Y" thing. But your comment would have been taken more seriously if you had backed it up with strong evidence.
I also started programming on Windows with VB. However, I eventually found myself bumping against the arbitrary boundaries and limitations that inhere in a proprietary system. Moving first to FOSS technologies on Windows and eventually to a FOSS operating system has been like taking a deep breath after being held underwater for a long time.
With that lesson, I drop this handle.