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Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

I'm old enough to remember when "hacker" was a term of respect and awe for people with top notch technical skills.

Then again, I have come across many Americans who think "boffin" is a derogatory/negative term too...

That's because the US has an insidious, persistent, and wide-spread strain of anti-intellectualism. I can think of no time prior to college outside my home when being smart was actually considered "cool". In the US, "cool" is bossing other people around, and smart people get in the way of that. It's why Presidents like GWB purposefully put on a "dopey" persona, and it works.

When I first heard "boffin" I too thought it was derogatory, because, why would someone use a slang term to describe someone as smart if it wasn't in a snarky or derogatory manner?

Americans instinctively assume “boffin” is derogatory because it’s totally absent from American parlance (iOS autocorrects it to “bogging” in US), so without the cultural context it just sounds like a goofy word, like “doofus.” In an American context, it’s not a word that sounds as if it’s being spoken with admiration, so the true meaning is counterintuitive.

But when someone says/texts me a word I do not understand, I look it up including the contexts it is used in. I do not immediately, from the sound of a word I never heard, assume someone is calling me an idiot. Doing so actually makes you an idiot.

I do not understand how it seems logical to assume that me speaking the English I have learned in school (which is the Queens English when I was young in the Netherlands) is somehow interpreted by someone with a limited vocabulary as derogatory.

I associate it with The Register. A lot of British slang sounds silly to Americans.[1] Construing it as derogatory is not an expression of American anti-intellectualism. It's the opposite - the term sounds to us like it's making fun of smart people especially due to certain writers overusing it.

[1] A parody of this: https://www.memecenter.com/fun/3500907/my-face-when-american...

Don't believe I've seen the word anywhere but El Reg for a long time.

When I first heard samples from The Warriors (years before I saw the film) I misheard "Good news, boppers" as "Good news, boffins". I have never gained employment as a radio DJ.

How old are you? By 1983 "hacker" already had negative connotations.

>vintage coder

woops, my apologies, carry on.

That's probably because it's often used to describe lawyers, which have a pretty notorious representation, as a whole.

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