If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

That is simply not true.

We weren't poor growing up but we were not far from it (at least according to the Western standards). I remember having to eat only once a day and wearing clothes with holes in them because we couldn't afford to go clothes shopping. My father, a good engineer with a university degree lost his job after the Soviet collapse and my mom had to work 2 janitor jobs.

However, if my father knew someone who had a broken radio or TV he would get it for me so I can take it appart and play with the innards. I had a soldering iron and a neighbor had given me his old voltmeter. So I was learning quite a bit without having expensive equipment.

I started to like computers, because I saw them at schools. The Americans had donated us some nice shiny IBM computers and we were fighting to get access to them after school. My mom notice my new infatuation with computers, and she saved enough money for half a year and then bought a Russian ZX Spectrum knock-off and a tape player.

I had asked my neighbor (who was a TV repairman) to hook the console up to our old black and white TV. Then I learned English so I could read all the programming manuals. My friends used to copy and pirate games. But I enjoyed writing basic, assembly, pascal and C. If you segfaulted, you had to reaload the compiler from tape so you waiting for 10 minutes. It was a fun but very arduous process.

Anyway, the fact that we were poor didn't prevent me from hacking since I remember. All it matters is to have good parents who really support and nurture education.

(By the way mom was not allowed to go to school after her 7th grade because she had to support her family. I think she vowed that her children will get all the education they want no matter what).

What a load of bollocks. My parents were dirt-poor (on an first-world scale) growing up. I did all my early learning on an IBM PC-XT (which was given to us). It was nearly decade-old technology by the time I started in on QBasic, and not worth very much at all. I bought my first computer at age 14, with money that I'd made over the summer gutting and renovating houses.

Sure, in a sense, I was privileged, in that my dad did everything he could to give me a competitive advantage by introducing me to logic (I wore out his Martin Gardner books), chess (he never pulled a punch. We played for years before I beat him), classical literature (what extra money he had went to books. He has a library I still envy), music (he has a degree in music, which helps explain the lack of financial resources), and mathematics (he taught me algebra and trig years before I ran into them in school). He inspired a thirst for learning in me, and did everything he could to develop my ability to think critically because he didn't have financial resources. If that's a "disgusting flaunting of privilege", then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to apologize for having parents who cared about me enough to push me to develop my ability to think. They did the same with my other siblings - two younger sisters and a brother. None of them are programmers, despite the fact that they grew up with more money and technology than I did.

What this article really reads like is someone with a martyr complex making excuses for why they aren't good at whatever. Sure, there are people who are in CS who were privileged, and given a leg up by parents who could afford expensive technology, but it's flatly offensive to say that everyone who was interested in computers from a young age is a spoiled child of privilege who flaunts that privilege in others' faces.

The article doesn't really have a point. The title is really the only thing that the article is trying to demonstrate. "Privileged" is a code word in feminist discourse, and is applied to virtually any and every distinction that social beings make.

The overall thrust of the article is to shame—i.e. if you had an opportunity that others didn't have, you should feel guilty about it. It's not clear to me how this kind of discourse moves society forward. Everyone has different opportunities, no one is pretending that poor people have just as easy a time as rich people. If you have a claim to status ("I've been hacking since age 8") that's based on a pre-existing advantage, you should feel guilty for claiming such status.

This type of discourse is not about hacking or hackers or geek culture, it's a discourse that is deeply offended by the very existence of status or distinctions, and has trouble believing that any source of privilege has been earned (unless you happen to have a subaltern identity).

oh wow, this article is bound to get flogged on HN ;) before the onslaught begins, i'd like to add my own short anecdote. reading this article reminds me of when i took my first CS course as a freshman in college over a decade ago ... i remember that there were clearly 2 groups of students (i belonged to the latter):

- those who, like this article describes, had hacked since a young age (sorry for the gross generalization, but these tended to be middle or upper middle class white males)

- those who had maybe taken AP Computer Science in high school but otherwise had no real programming experience (these tended to be minorities in race, social class, and gender)

i remember that despite the best efforts of the teaching staff to 'level the playing field', the people in the former group clearly had a much easier time while many people in the latter group were intimidated by those in the former group (even when no ill will was intended). i dunno where i'm going with this anecdote, but that just popped into my head :)

Whether this is true for a given person depends on when they were 8.

For a 48-year-old, this would certainly be true. For an 18-year-old, not so much. The march of technology has more or less solved this one particular issue.

I am a black male. My father made 30k a year. He could never afford a computer for me but I have been hacking since 10. A computer teacher of mine sent me to see some friends of hers on a "Kids to go work" day and I got an internship out of it. I was there so much (and even sleep there if they would let me) they let me work for a computer. My point is that if your really want to do something you will find a way to do it; that is a true hustlers mentality.

FYI: Im a beast on the basketball court too.

Ugh. I sympathize with this argument but its flaws are so glaring that it's trivially knocked down, which is a shame, because there is a class privilege argument to be made about this field. Before you say "programming since age 8 just means you had rich parents", you have to address the fact that most kids with rich parents don't become hackers, and that even if you're not impoverishing yourself to support the hobby, you're still making sacrifices (notably social) to support it.

Whatever, moar feminist fascism.

I did get my first computer when I was age 8. That was back in 1991 and all I got was nearly 10 year old ZX Spectrum. I guess I WAS privileged, but the privilege was that my parents, although old (mother was 41 when she conceived) and uneducated, they both only have primary schools - father is barely literate, mother heavily dyslectic. But they have seen the future and wanted a piece of it for their kid.

I had the lousiest clothes, the worst shoes and least friends. But I had forward thinking parents and my own computer ever since.

I believe these "its all male conspiracy" radical feminists should spend more time working with younger girls instead of ranting in books and teh webz.

Before you start downvoting me - know that I know what women are capable of. I was raised by one that is a total badass and kept tearing men new ones throughout her life (she was a truck driver back in 70's, etc.). But these whiny girlies need to woman-up and do some work.

One beef with the article, one with the tone of many of the upvoted replies:

As for the article, I'd argue that the strict ability to afford a computer matters much less than the understanding of why a computer is useful, how to get the most out of it, and even that it can be programmed by kids. Possessing the knowledge that computers can be programmed by kids to do fun and useful things is, I'd argue, correlated with socioeconomic status. Passing that knowledge onto your kids is also correlated with the gender of those kids, it seems.

Of course, the fact that one comes from a privileged position doesn't require an apology. Nobody is asking anyone for a heartfelt "I'm sorry" note, or a reparations check, or whatever. One can be aware of one's position of privilege without being ashamed of it.

I for one fondly remember the feeling of empowerment when I was able to fire up my dad's copy of Visual Basic and create a working facsimile of Blackjack. I was using a real, grown up tool to create real, cool stuff all by myself (well, not really, but it sure felt that way). I'd love to give any kid the chance to feel that sense of limitless power.

When I was growing up, my parents wanted me to be a normal kid. This means I was made to play outside a lot.

A couple of my friends' parents were programmers, so they had computers at home. They could write programs in BASIC and Pascal and make them do cool things. I wanted to do that too.

I had a notebook where I would secretly write BASIC (it was terrible code, by the way). My school had computers, a whole 10 of them. They were 286s running DOS. When I would get a chance, I would plead with a teacher at my school to let me stay in the computer lab after hours and try out my code.

I got my first computer at 14. Now, it wasn't my computer. I could have at most an hour a week on it. This was a rule that was strictly enforced. So I was still writing a lot of code on paper (usually hidden under my math notebook).

So I was never encouraged to become a programmer, I was actively discouraged from doing that. But somehow even without access to a computer I wanted to code.

At a certain point my parents just gave up trying to make me a lawyer or doctor. So there's a happy ending. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story.

Bull. Shit. When I was 8 years old, I started computing, but not at all because I was privileged. Just because someone has a computer at a young age doesn't mean they're parents went out and bought a state of the art computer. As an immigrant family we couldn't afford much in the way of leisure, but they at least knew a good deal when they saw one. So, when they saw a "computer" at the local flea market for a $100, they went for it. That means that I was hacking BASIC in DOS on a Tandy 1000 while all my friends played flight simulators in Windows 3.11 on their immensely more expensive/powerful 486's.

Despite being excessive at points ("disgusting flaunting of privilege") I think the article points out a real problem. In my experience, the only way to fill this gap is to actively--as adult programmers--"bootstrap" the computing lives of lower class children in our communities.

For example, I volunteer with a church ministry that refurbishes old machines, installs Ubuntu, and gives them / grants them to those who need them (we just call it the Hardware Cooperative).

Our last machine went to a child who just turned 10. His family is low-income and their lone computer was a decade old HP running a virus-filled XP that rebooted every few minutes.

We gave him a speedy little box with Edubuntu on it and he was thrilled by it. He took to it immediately and was engrossed by Tux4Kids and more.

Without our donation, it was obvious that he wasn't going to go anywhere with computers on that XP machine. Without us "bootstrapping" the process for him, I don't see how he ever could have developed an interest in computers, but now I'd say there's a fairly big chance.

So yes: check your privilege if you've got it. But more proactively, look to see how you can prevent these kinds of gaps in the future.

It is unclear to me what argument this article is trying to make - the headline makes me think it is about getting early access to computers due to rich parents, and it partly is, but then it dives off on a tangent about gender. (Disclaimer: I fit the stereotype of the title exactly, as I am a male who started programming when I was roughly 10 on a computer bought by my parents.)

This is only personal experience, but my family had a computer when I was young (8 or 9, and my siblings are a couple years younger). This was a family computer, not mine personally, and my brother and sister were both exposed to it as well, with equal opportunity to experiment and learn, but neither of them developed an interest in programming or computer technology like I did. There was no gender bias when computer access was given - we all used it on a regular basis. Maybe this is untrue for other families, but my sister had just as much opportunity to uncover computer science aspirations at roughly the same age as me.

I certainly agree with the idea that "class" (or at least parents' foresight in buying computers) influenced my ability to get involved with computers early, but I didn't observe any gender bias in this early exposure. Surely this is becoming even more true with the proliferation of computers in everyday life - if you can use Facebook, you have enough access to learn much more about computers. The only impediment is your curiosity about the topic. Perhaps there are other gender-related factors that determine whether one is likely to be a self-motivated proto-hacker, but computer access doesn't seem to be one of them.

I don't buy it. I grew up on a subsistence farm and we were, I think, living well below the poverty line. I started programming when I was 8, on a Timex Sinclair 1000, which my brother and I saved up to buy. We learned by trial and error and a ZX81 assembly book that came from the library. I picked raspberries one summer (among other things) to buy a C64.

> Me and some of my black friends were talking about the other guys in CS. Some of them have been programming since they were eight. We can’t compete with that.

That's an unfortunate attitude and just not true. This reminds me of a thread (on mathoverflow I think, but I can't find it) where the general consensus was working hard throughout grad school (in math) was the great equalizer, and mattered more than how much background you came in with. The same is true for undergrad and CS.

Moreover, it isn't a competition. Someone else being an amazing hacker doesn't detract from what you know. In fact, having such people around can teach and inspire. I'd much rather be a small fish in a big pond (as I am.)

Interesting how many of the comments in this thread take the form of "This article is bullshit! I started coding when I was eight because I got my first computer by way of [something other than privilege or affluence]."

Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data.

[Full disclosure: I did my first hacking with BASIC and Rexx at around seven or eight because my parents were wealthy enough to afford an Amiga 500--but this experience would never inspire me to write an article claiming that everyone who started coding at a young age must have come from similar socioeconomic conditions.]

When I was eleven my father -- a painter who worked fourteen hour days -- bought me an Atari 400 because it was the one thing I wanted most in the world at the time. We were not privileged...my father just recognized a desire and talent in me that he wanted to help foster. I love you, Dad.

I'm not sure where I fit in this discussion. I was comfortably middle class growing up. But I didn't have a computer until I was a sophomore in high school. And while I thought it was cool and I spent time on it, I didn't do any actual programming until I took a course my senior year of high school.

In my freshmen year of college, as a CS major, there were plenty of students who had been programming much, much longer than me. In theory, I was at a disadvantage because just about everything was new to me. But, in practice, everything evened out by about junior year. Yes, the students who started programming well before college were at an advantage for the first few programming intensive courses. But very quickly, a CS curriculum goes into material most people don't teach themselves.

I'm going to be that guy, but I disagree with that as well. I lived in a very poor area in Southeast Texas and built my first computer (literally) from junk parts I found in ditches. I had a little help but it was pretty easy to figure out since everything had notches to make sure everything goes in the right place.

I was 8, coincidence here.

With a pirated Windows 98se from my mom's boyfriend at the time, it worked out alright. I tied up my mom's phone line with netzero, and that's when I started my adventure into the web.

Edit: For clarification, I had built a 233mhz machine with 32mB of ram. I put 98se on it because I hadn't learned of linux yet, and it probably would have been too much for me at that time anyway. Ubuntu didn't exist.

Around age 10 we finally got DSL, and by that time I had gathered up enough money to build a "real" machine, with an Athlon XP. Again, with all pirated software.

Software piracy enables more to younger poor people than your parents being wealthy in my opinion. Not saying it's right, but it sure allowed me to do things I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do.

That article is more relevant for people that grew up in the 80s, when hardware was less available than it is today. I started my adventure in the 2000s.

I'm 18 now, work for a startup, and I have quite a little nestegg from social marketing apps I've built in the last few years. Nothing my family did really had any effect on my interest in computers.

20 year olds today were 8 in 1998.

In pretty much all of the western world, by the 1990s (and even mid/late 80s) owning a computer was within the reach of all but the retched poor.

My parents bought a PC XT clone in 1987 and they were at best middle-class.

Bull.

My parents were working class slobs, but they bought me a computer at the age of 10. It was a TRS-80 Color Computer which was the cheapest thing you could get at that time. It was just about the only thing they spent money on for me. I got no piano lessons, no braces, no model rockets, nothing -- except a Dad who wouldn't take a foreman position when he was offered one, a Mom who taught me to "stay in a dead end job you hate no matter what"... Hell, the schoolteacher and carpenter next door wouldn't talk to me family since they thought my parents were just a bunch of scabs...

Honestly, I don't think those computers were that expensive. My first Computer was not even a C64, it was a ZX Spectrum. Not sure how much it cost - but if that was too much, you could get "build your own" kits for ZX 81, I think they were << 100$ (maybe 50$)?

Without a doubt, there were a lot of people in the world who couldn't afford it. But in the western world, I suspect not that many. The privilege is more having parents who are understanding and caring enough to make the investment.

Granted, you also needed a TV... How common were TVs back then? I am pretty sure a TV was way more expensive than a ZX Spectrum.

While for the C64 you needed an extra storage medium, the Spectrum could save to and load from normal tape recorders.

Edit: this link says the initial price was 125GBP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Research Unfortunately I still don't know how much that was in $ or DM.

guilty as charged.

i attribute a lot of my success and my love of computers to my dad buying me an apple 2E and a programming book when i was 10. now hardly a day goes by when i don't think how lucky i am to be doing something i love. so yes, i was privileged and for that i am incredibly grateful.

Wrong, unless "privileged" means "not in abject poverty." We were distinctly lower-middle-class. I bought my first computer myself with my lifetime-accumulated birthday/lawnmowing/snowshoveling money.

My Dad purchased his first computer when I was 10. I learned a tremendous amount from my experiences with it, and for that I've always considered myself fortunate. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but they were able to afford a computer and they loved me enough to encourage my interests in it. So in that regard I definitely feel privileged.

Growing up I knew of a few kids who were just as interested in computers but weren't as lucky. They had all the potential in the world, but lacked the same opportunities I had. I was always aware of my "privilege", so I've felt it important over the years to help out in community computer labs and to help deserving kids by giving them older computers when I would get my hands on them.

But that said, I've also known plenty of 'privileged' kids with access to technology at their disposal but had no interest, or took no initiative to learn advanced concepts. For instance, my brothers didn't have the same interest in computers as I did. They were into other things, even though they had just as much access to our parent's computers as me.

I believe the most important factors for developing strong skills in computers (or anything else for that matter) is desire, effort, and dedication. These things don't have a price tag, and are not limited to certain groups of individuals.

Ok, I'll add my anecdote too. Hacking != Having a personal computer. I started programming on my 3rd grade (required-to-have) programmable calculator (that had 10 steps & comparison to 0 only). Then, my father showed me Pascal on his computer at work (and programmers in the 1980s Soviet Union did not upper middle class make; plumbers made more), and I started programming on paper, and bringing in my paper programs to my father's work to "check". Then, the school I went to was a special math school (merit, not privilege) and they got computers (the only school computers in our city then) in my 4th grade. When we came to the United States, we were on welfare, so, no personal computer till I was in college. And yet, the schools had computers, you know. Granted, old macs, but computers.

The reason the "anecdote" is relevant is that the article doesn't state any probabilities or historical context here, it's just "If A, then B". There were plenty of periods in America when that couldn't have been true even for most people. E.g., in 1970s, if you were hacking, it didn't mean privilege, just luck in having access somehow. If you're learning to hack _now_ as a child... Come on, pretty much anyone can get access to some type of device now, even if it's just in the library.

Most geeks I know were the BOTTOM of the social class in school and in society, partially because they started programming at 8 or before. Like me they were borderline aspies who were more interested in things than people. The type of person that gets completely obsessed with computers and gaming at a young age tends to be a dorky white guy (but not always). It's just the cards falling where they fall and has nothing do with sexism, racism, or bias. From my life observations, if there is a social bias in society, especially at school age, it is AGAINST kids who program at 8.

That entire post reeks of victimhood. The comments concern me even more, with the constant haranguing about racism, sexism, bias, etc. The entire premise of the piece seems elitist, snooty, and spiteful.

There aren't too many white guys in CS and there aren't too many black guys in the NBA and there aren't too many female kindergarten teachers. It doesn't need fixing. Knock it off with the social engineering and let us be who we are, without being lumped in with another -ism that must be corrected by a central planner.

Those feminist brains are so warped: "There is a subset of boys and men who burn with a passion for computers and computing. Through the intensity of their interest, they both mark the field as male and enshrine in its culture their preference for single-minded intensity and focus on technology."

I am supposed to feel guilty for what? Being intensely interested? Because that is something girls can't do?

No, it doesn't.

I bought my first computer in the 80s, when I was 9 years old, for 10 UK pounds that I had saved from delivering papers. My family was quite poor, and my parents never would have bought me a computer. My ZX81 was considered old and crappy when I bought it, but I taught myself to program using it.

I am white, grew up middle classed, able-bodied, raised christian, in the US, had two parents, and I am a man. What am I supposed to do?

Should I feel guilty? Should I make all efforts to use affirmative action to always hire women/minorities over men? Should I no longer meet with like-minded people and talk about our experiences in computing? Should I quit my job and go into teaching social studies in public school instead?

The article makes a few interesting points, but I am not convinced of the correlation and they are grasping at air. Plenty of us weren't rich kids, and not all rich kids went into technology. Not everyone with a computer at home went into technology either! My younger sister has had a computer available for a longer percentage of her life than me, and isn't in technology either.

I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was around 8 -- my entire family chipped in and it was pretty much the only Christmas present I got that year.

My school had a few Commodore 64s and we got to have one in our class room for a few months. I was instantly interested in computers and read all the computer books we had in the school library. My grade 3 teacher was the one that recommended to my parents that they get me a computer.

If anything in that article is actually true, I think it's ancient history now. Computers are quite literally everywhere now; even those 10 years younger than me were better off. The point about girls and computers is definitely out of date; I have a 13 year old daughter and her and all her friends have constant access to computers.

The class privilege in hackerland is when Youtube gets bought for a billion dollars because one of the founders is getting married to the daughter of SV royalty, not that your parents could afford a $600 computer in 1985.

First, I skimmed the article and it doesn't surprise me to hear feminist rhetoric like this.

My parents are only middle-class and got a Sharp MZ-700 in 1985, when I was 7. It had MS-BASIC (loaded from tape!) but had no decent games. Then, I got a C64 from an aunt and uncle in 1987, and it was great. A disk drive and freezer cartridge in 1988 and I learned 6502 programming.

So I was hacking since 8, but not especially privileged. Some of my friends had computers too, but they never learned to program. I did.

[EDIT] My parents weren't scientists, University educators or or computer scientists as in a lot of Silicon Valley cases.

I got into programming in 4th grade.

I had a sinclair 1000 when I was a kid. http://oldcomputers.net/ts1000.html Yes, $100. NOT a rich family's computer.

Eventually, I got a Commodore 16. $100 also.

Then, when that died and I was crazy about it, I got a Commodore 64. $600. Well, -I- didn't get it. The family did. I had to share with my sister and mother. (Dad didn't care.)

Eventually I got my first IBM-compatible. Again, shared. It was about $2500, if I remember correctly. This was about 10 years after the first computer our house had, I think.

I didn't have other hobbies. There were no expensive lessons or instruments to buy for me. Video games? Atari 2600, then 7800 that were bought used and dirt-cheap.

No, you don't -need- to have a wealthy family to get into programming early.

This is true for almost everything. In poor households, the children are generally required to perform more work to help support the household. For example, the cleaning lady at my work brings her son with her to help... can't be more than 14. Even if he had a computer, thats 2-3 hours everyday that he can't be using it, or practicing basketball, or whatever else he might succeed in. Poor parents also can't pay for coaching, etc.

This article boils down to: privileged people are privileged. True, by definition, but also meaningless.

I had early access to computers but never programmed or hacked (besides changing resource files in Mac OS) until taking a formal Pascal class in high school. I remember committing my first crime of copyright infringement, giving the elementary school our copy of Mario Teaches Typing to install in the lab.

As someone who liked computers but didn't start programming until later, I would argue if you started hacking at age 8 you are just a geek (me too), nothing more, nothing less.

I was hacking since before I was 8, and my family wasn't well off back then (although my dad's computer skills did get us to that point many years later). Of course, that young hacking still hasn't gotten me anywhere special yet at the age of 27.

If you read the article though, it's more directly addressing the issue that computing as a male geeky hobby at a young age has shaped and defined the current computing culture, and that is undeniably true.

Changing, yes, but not changed enough, yet.

I wouldn't say privileged, but certainly lucky. My father worked very hard on the railroad for his money. He wasn't 'privileged' himself, either; he came from a poor family and rose to the middle class by working like a dog.

Also, I knew some 'very poor' kids who had these machines. Funny, I don't remember them being expensive (but what did I know; I was 8 ;) Maybe they were; I'm too lazy to research it.

Class is a false concept created by those who want to keep people stuck in one station in life. Especially those who bemoan those who had some privilege. I wouldn't waste my time arguing with the people who buy into the premise of this article, because they are ideologues who will stop at nothing in their quest to make everyone equally miserable. Pass.

What in the sam hell is the point of this article?

In a nut shell: Life isn't fair, you need to learn to deal with it and stop bitching. The sooner you stop bitching, the sooner you can make strides to provide a better life for your children so they can be well off so some future naive little girl can call them privileged.

Extending this ridiculous logic to its absurd extreme, clearly we must conclude that Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Hendrix came from socioeconomically privileged families because they managed to get access to expensive musical instruments when they were kids.

It depends how old you are now.

Screw you lady. I'm tired of you and your "social justice" cabal that try to make me feel guilty about EVERYTHING. I started programming in high school and I've worked my fucking ass off getting to where I am.

Your article does nobody any fucking good. All it does is try to make certain people feel guilty about their success and gives everyone else an excuse to not work hard because "well, the cards are just stacked against you". Fuck you. You rob people of motivation.

Wholeheartedly disagree.

As evidence, the author mentions the late average age that the underprivileged "received" their first computer. As I recall, one Bill Gates began hacking at an early age, not because his privileged family showered him with cutting-edge technology, but because he bent a few rules to gain better access to a terminal through school.

Let's not confuse resourcefulness with privilege.

my parents were middle class, but when I first got a computer my parents were lower middle class and my dad just got his first engineering job.

I think it is either social class or your parents worked in tech and wanted you to learn about it.

Computer penetration in the US in 2001 was 61% and for the most part, those who didn't have a computer felt that they didn't need one[1].

Most incoming undergrads were 8 in 2000 so I would assert that this argument has no basis going forward.

[1 http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2002/03/18/da... ]