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Comment by canjobear | Hacker News Reader

Who cares if he’s a nice guy?

If he's being held up as some shining beacon of the "hacker-ish culture" as the grandparent poster is doing, it would be nice if he weren't also a jerk.

I don’t think of him as shining. I like that he’s a real person, flaws and all. Not someone to idolize. Many great hackers that I know and in general are total jerks (I suspect the trait helps wrangling a machine somehow but idk). I wouldn’t find it accurate to my experiences if we had some polished perfect optics guy as representative (not that that’s what he is)

> I suspect the trait helps wrangling a machine somehow

Disruptiveness, for lack of a better term. These are people who are well-acquainted with finding the boundaries of systems and barreling through them.

Everyone should kill their heroes. They almost never live up to the pedestals people place them on. They are all just people and have flaws. They don’t have to be some perfect person to do cool things we can respect.

I respect geohotz' achievements (generally). I would never hold him up as an example of hacker culture, or his persona as one to emulate. There is a difference between these things.

Is hacker culture not filled with "weird jerks"? Linus doesn't qualify? Who does?

Linus used to be a massive jerk until he fixed his attitude. Hackers can grow.

I've got massive respect for everybody who addresses their own problems and fixes them. Way too many people only look for the problem in other people, but it's never that simple.

Out of curiosity who would you show as an example of hacker culture?

They are mostly the people you never hear about in mainstream media. The quiet engineers and tinkerers of the world. Guys like Fabrice Bellard, jaquesm of hn fame, Stuff Made Here (YouTube). There are a lot of prolific hackers out there that have made or are making contributions.

Why the need to conflate personality traits with skill?

If I have a rare disease, I don't care if the doctor is nice. I want them to get the diagnosis correct.

Van Gogh painted brilliantly. And he cut off his ear.

Eminem is a great rapper. His themes can be violent.

The post I replied to was one about personality traits, not skill.

The poster probably meant that "«it would be nice» - yet largely irrelevant". You can abstract from those "personality traits" as long as """he is one who delivers""" - respectfully saying, as he is not obliged: he provided us with another tool, for our use, for free: he is a benefactor.

Talented but bad people breed a new generation of unnecessary untalented bad people.

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