Who is your hero?

http://www.alexbowe.com/miscellaneous/hero-typing/

by michaeltwofish • 16 years ago

15 32 16 years ago

wolfrom• 16 years ago

I think a good question on HN would be to whom here is pg not a hero in some way? Isn't that why people want to draft him for Congress / get his advice on everything / build statues of him out of old sim cards?

That being said, I did enjoy reading "I like the way Paul Graham quacks". And I do wonder if there are other people in the startup/investor community who have the same positive cred as pg.

tptacek• 16 years ago

Plenty of HN people are 'pg skeptics (it's getting harder to be skeptical about YC, though).

Here's a manifesto:

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

neilk• 16 years ago

Even Maciej concedes that pg knows a lot about certain topics.

I've noticed that pg hasn't been writing a lot of expansive, philosophical essays lately, like attempting to explain national characteristics of architecture. That kind of speculation is just asking for satire. Perhaps he's gotten the message.

I think pg is interesting for being a kind of working philosopher. He had various theories about business, programming languages, and youth, and actually tested them by experiment (betting his own money, too), and by most measures has won the argument.

younata• 16 years ago

"old sim cards"?

There are people who go through those things enough to make even a stick figure? I've been using the same sim card for the past 4 or 5 years.

nopassrecover3• 16 years ago

I had to change once in the last 10 years as apparently the standard (guessing file size) changed and new phones wouldn't support my old sim.

jcsalterego3• 16 years ago

HN lurkers such as dlsspy, pquerna, and zedshaw are my hacker heroes.

They need not introductions but I suppose links won't hurt:

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=dlsspy

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=pquerna

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=zedshaw

nopassrecover3• 16 years ago

Interesting, I don't know of these except zed shaw from article titles (catchup time).

I do know wheels and patio911 are always a good read though

ismarc• 16 years ago

strangely enough, I run into wheels a lot in #startups but rarely see his comments.

michaeltwofish2• 16 years ago

I like that. A lot of heroes go quietly about their business of making the world a little better, without having to wear their underpants on the outside to draw attention to themselves.

whatusername• 16 years ago

I'm not sure you can describe Zed Shaw as someone who doesn't draw attention to himself.

gojomo2• 16 years ago

FYI, the domain 'hackerne.ws' is registered by someone other than YC. Even if it currently resolves to the same machine, it might not in the future. Even if the current owner's intentions are pure, the domain could lapse into someone else's control.

So, better not to promote, nor login-to, 'hackerne.ws' URLs, unless it becomes the canonical domain linked from http://ycombinator.com.

(Why does it work? Seems the News.YC code doesn't care about the 'Host' header in requests, which it really ought to, so that people don't get into a habit of using sketchy URLs that could bite them down the road.)

jcsalterego3• 16 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84039

If you search for it http://searchyc.com/hackerne.ws, there's more discussion.

nopassrecover3• 16 years ago

Thomas Jefferson would be pretty close to the ideal hacker. (if others disagree I'm interested in why as I have very little opposing data so far).

philwelch3• 16 years ago

First major North American proponent of the tomato, inventor of the swivel chair, father of archeology--there's a lot of stuff there. He was about as prolific as Franklin.

hop2• 16 years ago

Add to that architect, champion of liberty, states rights, and freedom of religion.

Also drafting the declaration of independence and being responsible for the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

joshu• 16 years ago

Norman Borlaug

TheBranca18• 16 years ago

At the risk of sounding childish I'd say Batman is my hero. One could even consider him a hacker based on his technological prowess.

justinmitchell• 16 years ago

Richard Feynman: part hacker, part physicist, all work, and all fun.

warwick• 16 years ago

Willie Crowther. Worked on ARPANet, wrote colossal cave, caver and climber.

anigbrowl• 16 years ago

Socrates.

tae• 16 years ago

Elon Musk (Zip2, Paypal, SpaceX, Solarcity, Tesla Motors); engineer/entrepreneur, and inspiration for the film Iron Man's version of Tony Stark.

hop2• 16 years ago

Warren Buffett - Honest and successful, shares his wisdom, extremely independent thinker, wildly frugal, giving it all to the best run philanthropy to be spent entirely within a short period after he dies.

ifesdjeen• 16 years ago

i'd say _why and zedshaw. _why was a true hacker guy. he really dove into stuff. i liked the idea of writing a bytecode convertor to run ruby apps on google app engine, and tons of things besides that one. Zed writes nice posts. what's cool is that even though he gets annoyed easily and writes quite a bit of angry posts, he seems to care about people who start, and explains things to people. that's nice.

I like the way Ezra Zygmuntowicz explains stuff, and enjoy reading his posts and listening to records of his speeches.

Same thing about Michael Klishin, who used to be in Rails Core. Actually, that's the guy whom i learned from the most. I had a pleasure to meet him in person, and he did teach me tons of stuff. Not specifically-technical, more of vision-sharing things. Those things did influence me as a technical person a lot.

Same thing about Yehuda Katz. I like the way he thinks and ideas he comes up with (most of time).

So, I'd divide it in 2 parts: technical stuff | vision / point of view.

drtse4• 16 years ago

Just a little side note, if you haven't already, you should really read "The Passionate Programmer" (the previous edition was titled "My job went to India: 52 ways to save your job").

ganley• 16 years ago

Dean Kamen, Danny Hillis, and Adam Savage (not necessarily in that order).

alexbowe• 16 years ago

Thanks for reading the post, and Michael for posting it. I enjoyed all the comments. I only recognized Zed Shaw, Batman and a few others, so I've got some reading to do :)

crpatino• 16 years ago

Yeah baby!!! Batman's more famous than Jefferson, Feynman and Socrates put together!!!

Who is your hero?

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