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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand what the definition of "hacker" is in this article:

  > Young women don't magically become technologists at 22. 
  > Neither do young men. Hackers are born in childhood, 
  > because that's when the addiction to solving the 
  > puzzle or building something kicks in to those who've 
  > experienced that "victory!" moment like I had when I 
  > imposed my will on a couple electronic primates.

It seems to imply that people who simply make their living programming computers, and who came to programming when they were older, aren't "hackers". Am I missing something?

(Edit: Given that programming careers can be quite lucrative, and that careers in general are now quite long, it makes economic sense that people would want to join in later in their lives. Short of building a time machine to correct past parenting, must these people be permanently excluded from the industry?)

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Seems to me the author vividly conveys what she means by "hacker" in the very paragraph you quoted:

  technologist
  addiction
  solving puzzles
  building things
  "victory!" moment
  impose will on electronics

These things are done and felt for their own sake and not as a means to an end, like a paycheck. Perhaps that's the main difference.

Don't forget:

    born in childhood

(edit: I don't disagree with her other definitions. I am concerned that she's missed some key points of the larger debate, namely:

    * Should "outsiders" be actively encouraged to join 
      the community, or should the community be insular and
      inward-focused?
    * Should those who simply want to make a better living 
      be encouraged to learn about and seek employment in 
      the industry, given how lucrative careers can be?)

That seems uncharitable. "Born in childhood" is not a quality like the others. "A child's sense of play" might be.

We do not know whether hackers can be born in adulthood because we all weren't.

Regarding your questions there is an answer that fits hacker mentality perfectly: "Your mileage may vary".

Outsiders should try to join the community if they like. Indeed, you can't tell somebody who is "in" the community from the newcomer because in internet people don't wead badges.

Everybody should be encouraged to learn, but discouraged from cheating WRT their level and skills.

I think she also implied that this behavior will be exhibited at a very young age, or not at all. (Which jt2190 also points out below.) She's not the only one to imply this - or outright say it.

That always gives me pause, because it does not describe me. My family did not have a computer until I was 16. I figured out HTML on my own, but no programming. I took a programming course in high school, but it was rudimentary, and I did not seek out anymore at home. I don't think it ever occurred to me to try programming at home.

I actually am the hacker that I've read others say does not exist: I did not start programming until college.

Sure, I can look backwards before I started to program, or even before my family had a computer, and point out behaviors that align with being a "hacker." Despite not being a programmer at all, I was comfortable with computers after my family got one, and could figure out problems me and others had; I got a thrill out of making webpages, much the same kind of thrill I got when I first started to learn how to program. But despite these behaviors, I was not "hacking" until college.

I remember freshmen year, all of us computer science majors had a wide variety of experience in programming. A lot of kids had been programming since early teens. By junior year, I did not feel like there was a significant difference between me and them.

I didn't start to program until college, but I would absolutely describe myself as a math hacker starting in elementary school. It's the almost addictive problem-solving mentality that I associate with hacking, not 1s and 0s on a computer. I think if someone doesn't have that sort of mentality, they won't become a hacker no matter how early they're exposed to code -- and if they do have that mentality, they'll become a hacker of some sort whether or not code is the thing that ultimately holds their interest.

> this behavior will be exhibited at a very young age, or not at all

That's so obviously false that I doubt she's saying it. I suspect it's more like: these qualities tend to come up in childhood, so if we want to see more of them, that's where we should focus.

Everything about your comment ("I figured out HTML on my own") makes me bet you that had these qualities in spades as a kid long before you had a computer. All this existed before computers, after all. I remember Jerry Weinberg saying that he knew he wanted to devote his life to computers from the day Time Magazine ran a futuristic cover story about them in the late 1930s. Another farm kid, as it happens. He went to college to study computers and found they didn't exist yet, so he majored in physics and bided his time until programming became a thing.

I wonder sometimes whether any of this is about childhood per se or the fact that children are more likely to do things out of play, to figure stuff out, see what will happen, and so on. If that's it, then we can dispose of the controversy by agreeing that people who come to programming purely as a career or (god forbid) for status will do worse not if they're too old, but if they're too uncurious.

What I'm trying to describe is the "by 20, it's too late to make a hacker" sentiment, which I do hear people say. So if I did have these qualities, and we're going to identify them after we've already established that I am a hacker, then it must be true that lots of other people also have these qualities, but did not become hackers.

My point: the notion that good hackers must be hacking on, and tinkering with, computers at a young age is probably too simplistic.

I think her point was that we can't magically transform random person x, at the age of 22, into a hacker. Not that it can't happen at all, but also that it can't be forced. At least, that's how I chose to take the paragraph. Rarely when someone says "this doesn't happen", they mean it is impossible. Just unlikely.

If I've spent the last 10 years being interested in computers, it is unlikely that at the age of 22 I'm going to walk into a mechanic and decide then and there that I'm going to work on cars for the rest of my life. Does it happen though? Definitely. Is it common? Doubt it.

Actually, I made it a point to explain that it doesn't have to be computers...

"Even if they lacked computers, they were taking apart alarm clocks, repairing pencil sharpeners or tinkering with ham radios. Some of them built pumpkin launchers or LEGO trains."

There are many early maker/hacker experiences that don't require access to or interest in computers. The point was that, at some point early on, every hacker (maybe there's an outlier or three, but I'd be shocked if there were twenty) had some experience digging in and building or fixing or changing something.

For me, it started a long time before my exposure to computers. I grew up in a rural area. As early as toddlerhood, I was learning to cook, sew, make candles, weave on a loom, etc. I was making as early as I could hold things and be relied on to keep them out of my mouth. It never occurred to me to throw something away without trying to fix it first, because if something broke, my parents would fix it, and I'd watch or help.

It's not about computers and youth, it's about making/fixing/tinkering and youth.

And my point was that I don't think anyone could point to those behaviors in me until I was 16. Before then, I think I was inquisitive, but had never had an opportunity to make in the manner you're talking about.

I don't think I ever fixed, made or was curious about such things when I was a child. So I guess I'll just have to accept my fate of becoming a corporate programming drone that hackers will secretly or not so snicker at for being so clueless and unproductive, and to become unemployable or change careers at 40 because of my relative lack of passion for the craft. At least I've been warned.

Well, you could take everything incredibly personally for no obvious reason, or you could consider that no one is actually saying you have to be a "hacker" so-called to participate in the industry.

I think you misunderstand me. I said that I would end up as a "corporate programming drone" - clearly a programming drone is part of the industry. What I'm saying is that, while I could probably get into the industry (if I could stay there for my whole professional life I'm a little uncertain about - see my OP), it seems that I would forever be an inferior programmer because I don't have the necessary passion to become a great programmer (or "great hacker" - and I realize that they are not necessarily the exact same thing), as implied by the OP of this post and some/many others. But I want to devote my professional life to something that I'm sufficiently passionate about and where I can make a positive impact, not just be another worker bee that is kind of doing an okay job but is vastly inferior to a lot of the truly passionate programmers, who occasionally look down the nose at me for not being devoted or skilled enough. Is this so ambitious? I don't think so - I think many people deep down want to make an impact. I don't have ambitions of being the best, or require it. I don't even require that I have to be more than average. But I want to make a tangible impact, I want to feel a purpose. I don't want to wake up in 10 years and realize that my passion was simply not sufficient, that most or many of my peers are far surpassing me in my craft, and I simply have to accept a lifetime of inferiority, or to maybe have to change my career entirely.

I'm not out of university yet, and I think that I've found something that I can devote my career to. But then I read about these people that make me question my passion, because really, it can be hard to gauge how passionate you are compared to most other people. And if it turns out that they're insinuations are correct - that I really don't have the sufficient drive and passion to make a satisfying career out of this - maybe I'll need to get out now...

It's a kind of existential question: who am I and where do I belong? But if you want to dismiss this as just being overly sensitive, that's fine.

If you have a drive to make an impact and to feel a purpose, then I think you'll be fine. I think those traits go a long way.

There's more to it than that though. She is talking about hacking not just in the context of programming, but in a range of activities that may lead somebody to program on their own. It's more about the spirit of it. It's possible to be a hacker making web pages, learning what the markup can do, building whatever level of interactivity you could without 'proper programming.' And, possibly, the most important part of it was the 'thrill' you got out of it.

Of course there may be women in her example that take to their first LUG meeting and go on to become hackers, but assuming that that will be the result, and planning entire social movements accordingly, seems like a bad bet.

I don't think "hacker" and "programmer" are completely synonymous. The "hacker" attributes that you definitely see in some children - taking apart things (although often failing to put them back together), building things, solving problems - often turn into careers in mechanical engineering, electronics, even sculpture. Programming is just one way of expressing that desire to create and tinker. I don't think all programmers are hackers, and many hackers aren't programmers.

You can become a "hacker" at an older age, it's just a more difficult path. Most hackers have spent their teenage years building up various technical skills and are intimately familiar with learning new systems and troubleshooting systems. That doesn't mean they have necessarily been programming since they were 12 but it does mean they've been "solving or building". Similarly, one would be surprised to see a high caliber athlete begin as an adult. Typically such folks have embarked on a long program of athletics and sports from the age of puberty, or earlier, onward.

Not all programmers are hackers. Not all hackers are programmers.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

You have to allow for exceptions. Talking about apples is not denying the existence of oranges.

It is just very hard for a 20+ to become interested in something that is not related to something prominent in their life thus far. A boy whose life has been about cars and football is not very likely to pick up an interest in butterflies.

I don't think that's what she's saying. Note that she defines the personality type as an interest in "solving the puzzle or building something." Even if you don't have access to computers to tinker with, the sort of person who tends to become good at programming is the type who has always been innately curious and tinkering with something.

You are equivocating falsely been "hacker" and "the industry"

Other than the seemingly obvious benefit that one gets by starting earlier in life with something, it seems to be that it is a decently widespread attitude that if you didn't start programming when you were 12 or whatever, by some mystical voice that called you towards the terminal, than you will never be a good/great programmer (or "hacker"). Or, that you just aren't passionate enough, or else you would have inevitably found yourself tinkering with computers or whatever. So people like me who started in university (and who never really tinkered with anything other than Lego, when I was like 7) are doomed to a life of sub-par mediocrity, which is kind of disheartening considering that this looks to be what I want to do as a whole career, i.e. a very large part of my life. But I guess I have to get used to a lifetime of being the inferior programmer who gets all the scraps, or just make a mess which the 10X programmers, or rockstar programmers, or whatever they will be called, will have to clean up after.

There's a big difference between a professional developer and a "rockstar programmer"; the latter may safely be assumed to have no sense of elegance, and to utter all sorts of atrocities in the process of building something that barely works as fast as possible and then moving on to the next thing, which is why I've found it quite feasible to make a living cleaning up after them. I see no reason why you can't do likewise; it's a more sedate professional life, but also a more satisfying one -- your "rockstar programmers" move on quickly because they don't dare to stand still for fear of their mistakes catching up with them, while the guy who solves those problems is always well favored.

Don't be fooled by propagandists of ESR's stripe or by bizarre little hothouses like the Silicon Valley startup scene! What counts in the software industry at large is not whether you call yourself a "rockstar" or a "hacker" or whatever else you like, but instead whether you are a professional with solid engineering chops. Concentrate on developing your professionalism and your professional skills, and you won't go wrong. All else is fashion.

(Don't equate "rockstar programmer" with "hacker", either. The former tend to view the latter as outdated Emacs-using neckbeards with no relevance to the real world; the latter tend to view the former as tiresome, barely competent children who wouldn't know good code or good tooling if they broke their nose on it. Which opinion is accurate, if any, is left as an exercise for the reader..)

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