Being a Non-Hacker in a Hacker's World

http://www.scribblesheet.co.uk/viewarticle.php?aid=216

by JohnN • 19 years ago

24 28 19 years ago

scribblesheet.co.uk

An article I wrote about being a non-hacker in a hackers world. It can be uncomfortable.

How many people on YC news cannot hack?

JohnN4• 19 years ago

How many non hackers are here on YC News?

tuukkah• 19 years ago

Hacker News ;-) I'm sure good things will come from your Python 101, even if you don't love hacking enough to have become a hacker.

JohnN4• 19 years ago

I am on my way to becoming a hacker, dont you worry. Been so busy working on my startup with my co-founder.

djb2• 19 years ago

I'm one. Coincidentally, I'll also be starting to learn how to program tomorrow. I'll be learning C from K&R. I wish you the best of luck with Python.

hga• 19 years ago

A warning or two on C and K&R:

If you hit a brick wall when you get to the chapter on pointers and arrays, don't panic. That's perhaps the first relatively hard thing to learn in C, it may take you a little while to grok it.

And I get the impression that K&R doesn't teach it well; I myself read the Lions notes to "get it" (_Lions' Commentary on Unix_, ISBN 1573980137, a critical 1977 book with the UNIX Version 6 source code and excellent commentary). Now of course there are many more good expositions on this and the other harder parts of C.

a13x• 19 years ago

I found this http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/cclass/cclass.html a useful, lighter, accompaniment to K&R when first learning C. Good luck. C is a great language for, er, implementing higher-level languages in ;-.

timr2• 19 years ago

Oh, dear god...don't learn how to program from K&R!

Aside from K&R being a bad first-time instructional book, C is just a bad choice of a first-time language. Most CS departments start freshmen with Java, these days (hell...back in my day, most new programmers started with Basic or Pascal, before moving into the ugly world of C.)

If at all possible, learn a scripting language first. Learn Python. Learn Perl. Learn Javascript. All are more productive and fun for first-timers than C. Compared to C, they're all ultra-expressive and ultra-friendly, and you will have an easier time understanding the why of programming, since you won't be as distracted with the details of the how.

danteembermage• 19 years ago

I'm an aspiring hacker, but definitely not there yet. I've made some cool stuff in FORTRAN and Matlab (numerical analysis major) and I've pulled off some somewhat clever stuff in SAS, but it's hard to really feel like part of the community without knowing some kind of "industrial strength" language like python, C, C++, Java, Scheme, Perl, Ruby, etc. really anything that you could build a web-app in, even if it's blub.

mrtron• 19 years ago

If you are learning Python, new to programming, and want to be a web-entrepreneur, I strongly suggest you check into Django once you learn Python reasonably well.

Best of luck

edw519• 19 years ago

Oh how I wish I could share the joys of hacking with non-hackers, but that would be like describing the color blue to a blind man. You just gotta experience it yourself. There's nothing like putting something together and seeing it work the first time. Even if it isn't perfect, that first output is better than sex. Still makes make holler and jump out of my chair! (The output, not the sex.)

I would strongly suggest trying out any of the many "Build an App is x Days or Hours". Grab a book or something on-line. They're everywhere. There was even a pretty good "Build You Own Ruby on Rails Web App" on the forum a few days ago (probably 2nd or 3rd page by now). Follow the instructions and do what they say. Build you app.

One of two things will happen: you'll either feel like I do and you'll be hooked. Or not. Either way is OK, but to not give it a shot in 2007 would be a shame.

(By the way, you'll probably find out that's how the best of us got started. School is cool, but nothing replaces just doing it.)

JohnN4• 19 years ago

Thanks for the tips

iamelgringo2• 19 years ago

OK, so I read Hackers and Painters while in LA. I'd arrived after 3 years of studying computer graphics, 2D, 3D, image compositing, 3D animation. I wanted to be a VFX artist. I was starting to put together a decent portfolio of some stuff I'd done.

Then I made some friends who worked in the VFX industry, and I realized how much the life of an FX artist sucked. So, shortly after I got my first offer to work for an FX firm, I decided to leave town.

One of my friends, (he teaches FX at Sony Imageworks now) told me: The guys at Imageworks who have the most creative freedom are the programmers. The artists have to reproduce what someone else tells them to reproduce for 16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. The programers write code whatever way they want to as long as the code gets the job done.

So, I picked up a copy of Hackers and Painters, left LA and enrolled in a CS program. That was 3 years ago. I've been plugging away at school ever since.

I've since moved to the Bay area, I'm finishing my degree in two more semesters, and I'll finally have a go at my startup.

I agonized and complained for months after I read Hackers and Painters because I couldn't hack and I didn't think I'd ever be able to. I was intimidated. But, then I figured if I didn't take the leap and dive in, I'd still be whining about it months or years from now.

So, if you're upset that you don't fit in in hacker culture, and that your not a hacker... Maybe you're trying to tell yourself something. Maybe what you really want to do is learn how to hack. It's what I wanted all along. I just didn't know it.

whacked_new• 19 years ago

Thanks for the inspirational post. Keep it up, and keep sharing your experiences with others (on- and offline)!

Coming from an art background though, you probably have a significant advantage when it comes to creative expression.

JohnN4• 19 years ago

I need to learn how to hack and I will

choward93• 19 years ago

Great article. I cant write code if god could help me, but i understand it to a decent level. But i hope to take on the business end of things in my company because i have more experience there. Knowing how the program works is a great value for a business guy like me, because i can communicate with the hackers on my team, and speak in their dialect. Its also kinda necessary to understand how your product works.

traybould• 19 years ago

Just curious, why choose Python to learn first? Is that what most here would recommend?

timr2• 19 years ago

Python gives you the nice features of modern, dynamic languages (you might not know what this means, but trust me: they're nice), while still forcing you to think and write clean code. Plus, it's not academic -- Python is a full-fledged, big-boy language, and people use it regularly for real work.

There are other languages that you could learn first, but Python offers a really friendly cross-section of features and flexibility that makes it an attractive beginner's language. It's definitely the language I would teach to first-time programmers, given no other constraints.

ardit33• 19 years ago

I am so tired of hearing this word "hacker". Use, programmer, software engineer, coder whatever.

There are appropreate times to use the word "hack", when i am doing something really quick and dirty, just b/c it needs to get out asap, but probably I am not really proud of my solution, as it probably less maintanable on the long run.

When you heare phrases like: I did something "hackish", or my bug fix is kinda of a "hack", usually are not something programmers are proud of. Usually that means I did a quick and dirty solution to that problem, and not an elegant one.

In an early startup, i guess, being quick is the most important thing, but after a while you have to start caring about the long term of the code you are writting or end up like friendster, where their poor performance killed the company.

A good programmer will use a "hack" only as a last resort.

rms• 19 years ago

flame bait, this is just arguing semantics. it doesn't really matter one way or the other.

far33d2• 19 years ago

ardit, no offense, but your lack of knowledge about the etymology of the word is apparent. I hate to jump onto this flame-bait, but here's the real definition of a "hacker" from the illustrious jargon file:

 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
 
 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

joshwa• 19 years ago

argh please wrap your lines!

SamReidHughes2• 19 years ago

> I am so tired of hearing this word "hacker". Use, programmer, software engineer, coder whatever.

Exactly. Using words out of the jargon file is crass. You don't "learn to hack". It's just wrong and painful, seeing that phrase.

Being a Non-Hacker in a Hacker's World

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