Poll: Are you a Hacker ? Really ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782004

by jacquesm • 17 years ago

19 20 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

ionfish• 17 years ago

I tend to think that 'hacker' is like 'philosopher': something other people call one, not something one calls oneself. This implies that these terms are honorifics, not mere descriptions.

That being said, there are clearly plenty of people who disagree. For some philosophers (or perhaps merely academics who do philosophy!) see this discussion:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/who-is-a-philo...

And of course there's the Jargon File entry for the term 'hacker', which states that

  It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself
  that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy
  based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There
  is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a
  hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled
  bogus).

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

profquail• 17 years ago

I agree. There's plenty of people that would call me a "hacker" (my non-technical friends joke with me about it), but I wouldn't describe myself as one.

Besides, I don't even know Clojure! o_O

Davertron• 17 years ago

I think this often results from people not understanding what you do at all, so when they see you do something unfamiliar at a computer, you seem like a hacker to them. This seems to happen a lot when I pop open a shell and start working at the command line: it just seems like voodoo to certain people (like my parents or girlfriend). If you can get the same affect by showing something off to the folks who read hacker news though, you're probably a hacker in the sense it's used around here.

Oh, and I don't know Clojure either, and I'm not losing any sleep over it :)

raganwald• 17 years ago

On the whole "Don't call yourself a hacker thing," I say Bah! It stinks of false modesty, something like those hideously insincere statements politicians make when jockeying for position before an election: I am not running for office, but if asked to serve....

Sure I'm a hacker. I sincerely don't think I'm a good hacker and I have the lack of accomplishments to prove it. But sure I'm a hacker.

edw5192• 17 years ago

I hate to admit it, but I have never found a way to become comfortable with the name "Hacker News".

It violates one of the cardinal rules of business that I have tried to ascribe to: communicate exactly what you must with the right number of words, no more, no less.

The word "hacker" means many things to many people. Make no mistake about it:

I am a computer programmer.

I write applications for business. I have used many different tools over the years and have settled into the ones I like best. I love to learn, but most of all, I love to deliver software to my consumer so that they can make things happen.

I have written (what seems like) an infinite number of lines of code. I do it every day. I come to hn almost every day. (Imagine that, a programmer who works all day, every day, and takes his breaks by reading "Hacker News".)

I can't imagine doing anything else. I have considered other careers several times for a few microseconds, but quickly regained my senses.

I have a feeling that on my death bed (many years from now, I hope), my last words will be, "I love you, honey, and make sure that they check the repository for that new function I wrote yesterday."

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Interesting story, thank you for that. My own experience parallels yours with one big difference. Every couple of years I get totally sick of it and do something completely different for a while.

Travel, build stuff in 'the real world'.

It's a love/hate relationship, it is what I do best but I can't get over the frustrating feeling that we're doing this all completely wrong, there has to be a better way.

But I haven't found it yet.

edw5192• 17 years ago

It's a love/hate relationship

For me, it's love. The only hate is when others mount speed bumps or road blocks to slow my progress.

it is what I do best

I suspect that's true for many of us here. We should be grateful we found our calling. (I remember once reading that Kareem Abdul Jabbar was born at the perfect time and place to become exactly what he was meant to be: a basketball player. I feel the same way about programming.)

I can't get over the frustrating feeling that we're doing this all completely wrong, there has to be a better way.

Yes, that's the meta beauty of it! I spend almost as much time working on how to develop better as I spend actually developing.

But I haven't found it yet.

Good. If you did, you'd probably die. They didn't name it continuous learning and improvement for nothing.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

"The word "hacker" means many things to many people."

A little ambiguity helps people find the common ground to relate, nothing wrong with that.

keanemachine• 17 years ago

"I hate to admit it, but I have never found a way to become comfortable with the name "Hacker News"." My web filter in work is uncomfortable with the name "Hacker News" too. Thankfully, it has no problem with the URL http://news.ycombinator.com though :-)

DrJokepu• 17 years ago

Initially coming from a mechanical engineering background, I was always puzzled by the "hacker" expression. The qualities that people attribute to "hackers" on this site are the qualities of any good engineer; the ability to find creative "shortcut"-like solutions to hard problems, the ability to apply advanced mathematics (or computer science, in this case) to real-world problems, to understand business needs, etc. Needless to say that many start-up founders are engineers themselves.

But this is really just a terminology question so if people here prefer calling themselves hackers instead of engineers or computer programmers, well, I can live with that.

colinplamondon• 17 years ago

Not really, I just get shit done- sometimes that involves throwing together a quick app, sometimes that means designing a marketing site, sometimes that means coming up with new interface and product ideas, sometimes that means customer emails and sometimes that means going through our analytics to improve our sales funnel.

I'm no programmer, I just learn the minimum amount of programming to get what makes sense for me to do done.

alex_c• 17 years ago

No, and I don't aspire to be one. Nor a rockstar, ninja, pirate, robot, zombie, or anything similar.

I HAVE been programming in one form or another for about 15 years. I both enjoy doing it, and do it for a living. As long as I'm making something that is useful and/or profitable, I'm happy. I'm more interested in the end product than in the process, though.

I guess I'm a maker, not a hacker.

Randai• 17 years ago

Well I spend silly amounts of time on learning, reading, thinking, dreaming about and actually coding. So I guess I classify as a hacker. As someone else said, a good one, probably not compared to the "stars", although I feel I do have my moments. Mostly just enjoy coding and learning about software development that its quite a treat.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

What's hacker but have a life too supposed to mean? Does the fact that I work full time on extremely non-trivial software automatically imply I must not have a life?

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

No, it means that there is more to your life than just hacking.

I know quite a few people who simply do nothing but hack day & night, outside of their digital life there is not much to them. No significant other, no other 'distractions' just the keyboard and the screen.

I can imagine that if you do not know people like that that the above sounds somewhat fantastic, but it's really true.

peterwwillis• 17 years ago

Honestly?

Does anyone who isn't themselves a "hacker" actually associate the word with anything other than person who develops and utilizes methods of breaking into computer networks and exploiting security holes?

This word needs to be retired. It's 2009 and something more politically correct is just necessary if you wish to have anyone outside your immediate sphere of influence take you seriously.

ivanstojic• 17 years ago

I think that the name "Hacker News" doesn't really mean anything per se - just like I don't assume that Yahoo users/employees are a race of filthy brutes. Furthermore, I resent the way this poll is set up, particularly in the final two options.

"Hacker, but have a life too" sounds as if "having a life," whatever that means is somewhat a discrediting factor. The few hackers I know all lead rich, social lives and spend far less than all of their time working directly with computers.

"Either on HN or hacking" is even worse. Suggesting that the mythical true hacker type only hacks or reads HN is very misconceived.

There is more to being a hacker than writing code.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Having a life definitely was not meant as a discrediting factor, in fact I'd consider it an asset. See below in my answer to 'biohacker42' about possible alternatives.

abyssknight• 17 years ago

I hit option #4, "hacker, but have a life too", but to be honest that life is largely impacted by the other half. You know, the one where I'm leaning back at my desk, hacking away at code. Whether it's at work, off hours reading my Rails book, or taking a wild tangent to it's logical conclusion I find that it just feels right. Writing code, solving problems, and getting things done just seems to be the state where I belong.

I have some outlandish, borderline crazy goals in life. Not all of them involve a machine, and most of them do not involve business. Hopefully one day I'll manage to get one of them out there.

I like to think that we hackers are more than just programmers, developers or engineers. We have the capacity to learn, dream, and execute. The latter being a key component, but also the hardest to master.

This is what we do. Call it what you will.

Poll: Are you a Hacker ? Really ?

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