On Hacking - Richard Stallman | Hacker News Reader

On Hacking - Richard Stallman

stallman.org

57 pointsalecst22 comments

Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

That's one reasonable definition of hacking, but the examples he gives are trite. Changing a single letter on the sign of a school that no one has heard of is not interesting or notable. It's not even amusing. ("Customer Training College" to "Customer Draining College".)

He also contradicts that definition with:

I realized that if I could come up with a way [to eat with 6 chopsticks], it would be a hack. -- That train of thought is not playful, it's pretentious.

He had topped my hack. Was his action, too, a hack? I think so. Is he therefore a hacker? That depends on how much he likes to hack. -- So playful or not, if you're outdoing Richard Stallman, it's not hacking.

He said he thought it was a hack in the text you quoted. Where do you get "if you're outdoing Richard Stallman, it's not hacking."? Is that an expression of your own opinion, or is it intended to be a restatement of something Richard said? If so, what?

That expression is my joke based on the content and context of that essay.

He's suggesting that his friend may not be a hacker simply because it depends on "how much he likes to hack". My issue with that is two-fold: 1) it introduces the idea that being a hacker requires some form of external judgement and 2) it contracts his initial point that playing is hacking.

That said, it's possible his friend specifically did not enjoy eating with two sets of chopsticks in one hand.

This topic shouldn't be taken seriously, so I'm hesitant to post; however, there's a precedent in opposition to your first point that external judgement is not required. From the New Hacker's Dictionary entry for hacker:

"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). See also wannabee."

To what extent you may or may not like to hack does not depend on any external judgement, does it?

I think it's reasonable to judge that a fooer is someone who often engages in fooing rather than someone who has fooed once, for a number of values of foo — a dancer is someone who dances frequently, presumably because they like dancing, not someone who has danced once; a gardener is someone who gardens regularly, probably as a living, not someone who once pulled a weed; and similarly for values of foo including "paint", "box", "bricklay", "drum", and "hack". In none of these cases does it imply that the status is contingent on somebody else's judgment.

Having recently read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," Stallman comes across as actually being less of a hacker than Feynman.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080205071249/http://www.gorgora...

Even as a kid, Feynman was quite the hacker. Fixing radios and such because it was interesting and fun, and not caring if it was useful.

The extra pair of chopstics are communal, for picking up pieces of food and moving them to own your bowl/plate.

The PRC (no idea about the DPRK) was campaigning for the use of these pretty heavily around that time period as they're more sanitary and a lot of Chinese meals are taken "family style".

At least try to comprehend the problem before coming up with a hackish solution.

When the entire world starts using a word ("hack") in a way that you think is wrong, at some point it is you that becomes wrong. Language works that way.

Yet even though 'cool' means having a low temperature nearly everywhere, in some places it also means 'awesome' or 'snazzy'.

The term "cracker" is doomed to never catch on. However, I don't think it's out of reach to change the meaning of hack in the public's mind. A few viral videos or some mainstream media/pop celebrity attention could quickly change the meaning of any word.

Language may work that way, but RMS is not likely to concede the point. Thus his continuing battle over "GNU/Linux". He's a principled man, perhaps to a fault.

Of course, instead of wasting 20 years trying to get the media to use "hacking" the way he wanted to, he could have instead invented a new word that meant "finding creative solutions to problems," which likely would have been picked up by the media by now. But he's stubborn like that.

This is a marvelous little essay that I hadn't seen before. I think I like it better than anything else I've read by Stallman. It communicates the spirit of hacking in a way that is hard to do.

(I really hate the term "cracker" for security breakers though. It feels contrived, which is maybe why nobody uses it.)

Stallman refers to "exploring the roofs and tunnels of the MIT campus" in the 1960s and 1970s as hacking. FWIW, we used to ride on top of elevators (and sometimes their counterweights) at RPI in the 1970s and call it hacking. So, yes, I can relate to the article, man, whether or not hacking goes back to the 1920s or the Renaissance or ancient Greece.

Though I greatly admire Stallman, this essay is a bit simplistic and disappointing. I would argue that hacking precedes the age of the computer. Those pranks mentioned by Stallman were happening at MIT in the 1920s and 1930s already. In fact, at MIT "pranks" are known as "hacks".

Well, if a "hacker" is defined as someone who attacks difficult problems for the sake of satisfying his / her intellectual curiosity, then I would argue that there were hackers in Ancient Greece already. Moreover, in Italy there were hackers galore during the Renaissance. Though the term "hacker" was created at MIT, hackers have existed for a long time. Leonardo da Vinci was a hacker extraordinaire, for instance. Let us show some respect for the giants on whose shoulders we stand...

I'm sure Stallman knew about that, considering that he went there for some time.

He mentions someone from the 1300s he considers a hacker. I think he was referring to the term Hack.

An example of a small mind producing a small result.

Huh? I am no fan of RMS, but his mind does not deserve to be described as small. More importantly, the form of play he is describing -- which, as play, isn't trying to produce useful results or large results or necessarily any results at all -- is a deeply human thing. In the long run, it leads to large results much more reliably than serious effort to produce large results does.

Then write bigger things next time.

Is the parent post supposed to be self-referential?

If it is, then it was a nice hack.

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