It blows me away that "The Jargon File" is not required canon. Well, it can be anachronistic and old-school-nerd-bro coded, but there's some primal stuff in there
It might be good to know that you linked to the version which one person had outsized influence of, and should probably not be used to write history from. Except history on early Internet drama, perhaps.
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New version has many more terms in the lexicon, but it's good to see the "canonical" terms although the foreword exhibits its own strong bias. Original is missing some of my favorites from the so-called rogue fork like "bogo sort", "magic smoke", and "big red switch"
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Link to original
I'm trying to maintain that the nerds of yore and the bros* who invaded in the 2010s are different groups -- in which case "old-school nerd bro" would be a contradiction in terms -- but alas "bro" has simply come to mean "male", and, to the English majors writing the newspaper articles, "they all look the same". So maybe I need to give up.
* etymology: "tech bro", in analogy with "finance bro", which originated because fraternity brothers from top schools used to go into finance, but then migrated into Tech around '08. Associated stereotypically with developed pectorals and polo shirts with popped collars. Close to the "Chad" archetype, but with some light granola/yoga overtones.
the early "nerd-bro" practically required the distinction as a form of identity reclamation in a culture that disparaged their puny interests in computing. We should celebrate that that particular shield is no longer needed, and thus that gatekeeping is no longer needed for ego-survival, either.
These days it seems weird, even mildly culty, to make definitive and specific statements about “what hackers are like”. There are millions of us all over the world. Many of us barely have a spoken language in common, let alone share a sense of humor or cultural values.
And it includes an explanation of what is wrong with ESR's version. But well, lets reiterate that: ESR is this weird kind of quasi-libertarian ego-maniac who occasionally produces something marginally useful and then oversells how that thing is part of the critical internet infrastructure or something like that.
I wonder when it was.