Can The eXperimental Computing Club Survive?

Logic Bomb writes: "Salon has an article about the famous Berkely eXperimental Computing Club, from whence came GTK, the GIMP, early web browsers, and many other goodies. The article has a nice overview of the club's history, as well as questions about its continued existence. Apparently the rise of collaboration over the Internet has made it much harder to find recruits."

Comments

death of old school geekdom.

[saintlupus]

for some reason, this article reminded me a lot of the death of traditionaal one phone line bbses. i ran one for about three years in the early nineties, until the web cam down and crushed all of us. how did it happen? the same way that the xcf is dying.

its okay to be a geek now.

the people who wanted to kick my ass in high school are all on the web. bored housewives are hunting for tracks on napster. grandkids are sending email back and forth to their grandparents. and you don't have to go to some basement room full of unix workstations to talk about computer stuff any more.

it's a bit odd, but try sitting in a diner during the breakfast hour some time and not hearing a conversation about computers. and it's not just the geeks like us, its forklift drivers and waitresses and everyone else. places like the xcf (and like bbses, which is why i was reminded), were refuges for people who were into computing. now everyone is, to at least a slight degree. why bother having a refuge any more? there's nothing left to drive people in.

--saint
----

Carleton University's situation

[Forkenhoppen]

I don't know anything about XCC, but maybe I can shed a little light on the issue by telling you what's going on at my own university, up here in Canada.

Currently, at Carleton University, there exists a club with a similar purpose called Nexus. It was intended as a student-run research group, whereby students could gain access to the equipment they needed for certain projects, and have a better way of finding other people to join teams to work on said projects.

It's in danger of dying out this year.

What's killing it? I would suggest that it's the computer science department itself. In the last few years, the faculty of the computer science school at Carleton University has increased the workload of students exponentially. At the current state, we have the following "killer" courses, to weed out people who can't program:

204 - C++, the profs require you to use Visual C++, with the intent of forcing you to recognize all of the little things that are wrong with Microsoft's compiler. (Their words, not mine.) One of the killer assignments includes mixing operator overloading, templates, and exceptions. This is turning into a really frustrating course for a lot of people, because it's supposed to be an intro to C++ course. It's turning into a fight-the-compiler course.

304 - Object Oriented Software Engineering. You are forced to use ObjecTime, which is the most crash-prone, unuseable, finicky, flaky CASE tool I have ever seen. This is also a group work class, which only compounds the problems for a lot of people. Generally, the class is very beneficial, but with the amount of work and spare time it takes, and the required use of ObjecTime it definitely qualifies as killer.

384 - Algorithms. I agree that this should be a "killer" course. But there is a lot that isn't taught in this course that should be, simply because we're TESTED on it afterwards. They use the CLR book, too, which means that a lot of your own questions are never answered by the book, as there is no solution guide available to students. (And the authors don't want this to change.)

484 - Algorithms II. This is the course that's supposed to be THE killer. And from what I've heard, it is. (I'm only in third year right now.)

In addition to these required, core courses, we're also required to take several other courses in third year and above. Our options can be considered killer, too, as some of them (307, which is a Scheme/Prolog course, and requires as one assignment that you reimplement scheme within scheme; 302, a compiler course that I've also heard was a real time consumer) are just plain insane. Especially whenever you consider that each of these students is potentially taking a full course load, involving at least four other courses. (I've heard many a story of a student dropping all of their other courses just so they could get one of the above-mentioned courses enough of their time.)

It really doesn't help that we've got some really really crappy TAs at times. I've had friends in 204, Intro to C++, show me assignments they've gotten back with "WOULD NOT COMPILE" written on it. The reasoning of the TAs was as follows; I put the disk in the drive, I opened the project, and I hit compile. It stopped compiling, so it mustn't work. (In this case, it was because the TAs were compiling it on the disk. Visual C++ requires a good 10 megs swap space to compile anything, after all.) I really pity the people handing in this last assignment, which is the above-mentioned killer assignment for that course. The only TA is flying back to China as soon as he's finished marking them, so students will have absolutely no recourse if it doesn't run. (The new C++ prof absolutely refuses to remark assignments.)

(Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of the staff is just plain bad at teaching. The currently reigning C++ prof has a fetish for overloading every single operator. Last year's operating systems prof didn't know how to use fork() or IPC. Students have to make up for their profs' bad teaching by learning the material on their own time, which only makes things worse.)

This is what's killing the computer science societies at Carleton. There are no longer people with free time available to volunteer to run the offices of Nexus. There are rumors circulating already about more general services like CCSS shutting down, and the problem's only going to get worse. With CCSS and Nexus, it's becoming the case where the only people who actually have the time to run the services are first-year people. And now we're starting to find that we can't even attract their help. (Recent graduates are not allowed to help, thanks to some rather bizarre restrictions on clubs and societies, so this is what we're stuck with.)

If this keeps up, we really are going to lose all of our societies.

Re:Carleton University's situation

[Forkenhoppen]

Not to be a bitch, but it sounds like you simply have a challenging Computer Science curriculum. With the influx of people into the disciple brought about by its high media profile, it seems like a reasonable reaction from your professors.

I don't disagree with you, and I welcome the increased competition between students for those top marks. However, whenever it becomes less of an intellectual challenge, and more one of an endurance race, the societies are usually the first things to suffer. This was the point I was trying to make.

I should probably point out the flip-side to a lot of the statements I made in my original post:
- The 204 prof mentioned is still quite green, as he is only in his second year of teaching. His primary language is not english, and neither is that of the TAs for the course, which is probably where this confusion comes from. (I haven't had him as a prof.)
- The 304 class I mentioned is definitely one of the most useful courses I have ever taken thus far. The lectures were superb. My one beef is with ObjecTime, the CASE tool we're required to use for the course. Whenever you're taking a course on how to write well-designed code, you don't want to use a tool that falls apart at the seams an average of five times an hour.
- The prof who didn't know how to fork() has since "parted company" with the university.

The bottom line, as I said, is that our societies are dropping like flies. There tend to be very few people who have time to actually devote to projects. Whenever the Nexus project was started three years ago, there were a good half-dozen plus projects in the works. They've since all died, with no new ones taking their places.

It's hard for someone like myself to glance south at a place like MIT, or Berkeley, and their infamy, and then look back at my own institution and see the equivalent slowly dying in it's infancy from lack of interest. It's not the hard work I'm complaining about, it's the absence of spare time people have for such explorations.

As to how this applies to the XCF, all I'm saying is that perhaps the undergrads at Berkeley are feeling a similar pinch, when it comes down to the spare time that they're alotted to work on their pet projects. Perhaps someone should welcome the XCF to the real world, too.

I think this article is a bit of BS

[CalTrumpet]

The demise of the XCF has been highly exagerated. Here at Berkeley we have a number of computer clubs that serve an approximate purpose, like the CSUA and Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society.

So they haven't had a world-famous project since the GIMP: So What? How many Universities have an organization as productive as them? Maybe MIT? They are still working on individual projects, they're just not quite as ambitious as they once were, and the CS department is very supportive of them now.

Remember, these people are undergrads in one of the hardest CS programs in the country (trust me, we're all getting our asses kicked), and everything the XCF does is in proxy of a social life. I contemplated joining once, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to give the time commitment necessary. I'm not surprised that they don't have people beating down their door.

Also don't listen to anything Daniel Silverstein has to say. The guy's a bit of a prick.

Hey Stanford people: You may still have the axe, but you don't have anything like the XCF :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:MIT SIPB having similar issues

[bfields]

And the social barrier to entering SIPB has always been high, due in large part to elitism among its members and the perception of elitism by the community.

One got the impression (fair or not) from the Salon article that the people in this Berkeley club have in the past been rather arrogant and rude. If the attitude of people in your group is similar, then one can hardly blame the first-years from staying home now that they no longer depend on you for the decent computers.

All the talk of frankness and brutal criticism is particularly telling. Criticism is great, but it's much more effective if it's given politely. There's no reason why the occasion of dealing out criticism also needs to be an excuse for demonstrating one's superiority, or for miscellaneous verbal abuse.

You sound like someone that can understands the distinction between criticism and rudeness, and between flattery and basic politeness, but maybe some of your fellow SIPB people don't. Or maybe there's a more subtle problem--I've also been to my fair share of clubs where the older students talk amongst themselves and make no effort to meet anyone new--a very awkward situation to be in if you're new.

A new student at a place like MIT has a *lot* of social options. Would you advise such student take a second look at a club that can't treat them with basic respect?

---Bruce Fields

An internet based counterpart?

[PureFiction]

The article and many posts mention internet based collaboration as the main replacement for groups like the XCF.

Are there any groups online that are more than a simple sourceforge project and mailing list? Do any such groups for development exist online?

Re:Computing clubs, and The internet

[ragnar]

I don't entirely agree. I learned things by RTFM and figuring stuff out and I have seen people who had their hands held. Many of them expect it all their lives. It may seem a little harsh, but I think that any difficult task simply requires the personal effort to learn it. Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place. I have encountered my share of elite responses to my questions, and I try to be polite when someone is trying to take my time to comprehend basic things. Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.

Re:Clubs V. Internet?

[stepson]

So the internet, which is based on computers, is killing computer clubs? I guess thats possible, but maybe its just changing the way computer clubs work, y'know, just like how it changed commerce ...

Power corrupts

[flieghund]

Recently, there have been several articles lamenting the passing (or retiring) of some of the "old-school" hackers -- the first generation of computer geeks who helped shape the current environment of programming, hacking, the internet, computers in general. Many comments lament that no one today has the same aura of knowledge or contribution.

Well, I have to agree with Lumpy as to the general cause -- there has been a disturbing lack of teaching from one generation to the next. Those who posses power and knowledge (and let's face it, in programming knowledge is power) seem to be very reluctant to distribute said power/knowledge, for fear of losing their own influence.

The first-generation of hackers, the people now retiring or passing away, seem to me to be genuinely nice, helpful people. Calm, patient, and always willing to offer constructive criticism and advice. (YMMV) They freely passed their knowledge along to the second-generation of hackers, and for a long time those two generations have been collaboratively shaping the computing world.

Now, however, we're seeing the emergence of third- and fourth-generation hackers. Unfortunately, as lumpy points out, they often do not receive the same kind of instruction (if any at all). The second-generation hackers, so pleased at the time to be given knowledge, now resist passing that same knowledge along for fear of being dislodged from their godlike status. What arrogance! -- though I completely understand it. It's hard to let go of power. Yet, to me anyway, the most powerful people in the world are the teachers. And I don't mean exclusively in the traditional, K-12 sense. Anyone who takes on the task of passing along knowledge is a teacher, and holds an extremely powerful position -- of trust, of respect, and for shaping the next generation.

IMHO, most of the problems with todays kiddiez is that they were forced to learn their skills on their own. While I am all for learning via this method, it must be accompanied by guidance. Especially with programming/hacking, where there are as many moral and ethical issues at stake as technical! Today's third- and fourth-generation hackers have simply grown up without the guidance of the older generation. Forced to rely on their own resources, they have developed their own sense of morals, their own ethical code of conduct. It should not be a surprise that these are nearly opposite of the old-school "hacker ethic." Just exactly when and where were these new "wannabes" supposed to pick up this ethic? From the people telling them to RTFM?

Re:So that's it!

[JoeBuck]

The Salon technology coverage is still terrific; they are among the few journalists who can both write well and understand the free software movement.

If you don't like their Clinton/Gore lapdoggery, just skip direct to the technology page and bookmark that.

Different idea...

[Cre8oR]

So there are fewer and fewer "clubs" now days for computing and everything else. Think about some of the reasons clubs were started in the past.. IMO you joined a club (or started your own) because you wanted to interact with people that shared a common interest with you. It wasn't -only- for the interaction though.. it was to learn and better your understanding by working in a group. Now with the internet anyone who is curious about a topic can simply look it up. In the past there was no central resource like the internet is today. If you wanted information you either went to the library (if you were lucky enough to be near a good one) or started a club so you could share the experience. Fidning info and indulging your own curiousity was hard work.

So it makes total sense that there are fewer clubs and memberships are declining. With the rise of the internet and instant gratification there simply is no psychological need to have a club. Evertyhing you want/need to know is at your fingertips and you don't have to go out of your way to get at it. Why should you risk rejection by your peers when you can send an e-mail half way around the world in less time than it takes you to blink? It's a sad situation but this is where we are.

Lack of time is probably another factor. Now no one is 100% busy all the time but media and pop culture has created this image that we all should be busy 100% of the time. So even if we're not we say we are or we find ways to fill up our schedule. No one will admit they have time for a club. The internet is bringing to the front a lot of psychological nuances that have never been explored.

Re:Computing clubs, and The internet

[American AC in Paris]

Consider the following two lines from the parent post:

Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place.

Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.

Then how, pray tell, is a user supposed to learn a certain amount about Linux/BSD/whatever if teaching them how to use the 'cp' command is a waste of time? I assure you, if it's a waste of time to explain the 'cp' command to someone, then the odds of that person saying 'screw it' and going back over to Windows are painfully high.

Just out of curiosity, though, I decided to 'RTFM' for the cp command. My cp manpage contained a few of the following snippets:

• SYNOPSIS
  cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fip] source_file target_file
  cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fip] source_file ... target_directory
• This option also causes symbolic links to be copied, rather than followed, and special files to be created, rather than being copied as normal files.
• Created directories have the same mode as the corresponding source directory, unmodified by the process's umask.
• If the source file has its set-user-ID bit on and the user ID cannot be preserved, the set-user-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has its set-group-ID bit on and the group ID cannot be preserved, the set-group-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has both its set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits on, and either the user ID or group ID cannot be preserved, neither the set-user-ID nor set-group-ID bits are preserved in the copy's permissions.
• In the second synopsis form, target_directory must exist unless there is only one named source_file which is a directory and the -R flag is specified.
• If the destination file does not exist, the mode of the source file is used as modified by the file mode creation mask (umask, see csh(1)).
• Symbolic links are always followed unless the -R flag is set, in which case symbolic links are not followed, by default. The -H or -L flags (in conjunction with the -R flag) cause symbolic links to be followed as described above. The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified.

Walk in the park, no?

If users who want to switch to Linux are told to Read The Fine Manual for the "simple" things like cp, bash, and grep, then to come back later with "real" questions, they'll give up before they begin.

If anything, the people who always need their hands held are the ones that ceaselessly pester you about mid- to high-level. Newbies learn amazingly fast if given a reasonable amount of person-to-person attention and good guidance; there are few things as satisfying as watching a nervous first-time student grow to really enjoy themselves and get all gung-ho about what you've been teaching them. If you won't help those without a clue get started with some real, patient, human interaction, then odds are they'll go back to Windows and write the whole Linux scene off as an eletist geek haven. And, truth be told, if newbies are directed more often than not to RTFM, then that's exactly what the Linux scene is.

$ man reality

So that's it!

[update()]

He got a particular kick from discovering that GIMP files end in the letters ".xcf." "It made me so proud," he says. "That's really cool."

So that's where that extension comes from -- I always figured the GIMP guys just spell even worse than CmdrTaco.

Enjoyable article. I had vowed to stop reading Salon in disgust after the Henry Hyde incident, but couldn't because back then it was just too good. A few months ago, I saw a link to a Salon story and realized that I haven't bothered looking at it in at least six months. It had quickly degenerated into a boring mess of Clinton lapdoggery and the sort of columns you usually see in 'alternative' newspapers by writers who think they're being important because they say 'fuck' in every paragraph. I think it was the interminable series by the Chinese call girl that eventually sent me packing.

Meanwhile, they've cut costs by laying off their editorial staff (a typical bit of dot-com management savvy) and, in a sure sign of desperation, elevated sex to its own section. And obsequiously and shamelessly repeating the White House party line of the day hasn't proved as rewarding as it did during the Lewinsky days.

Clubs versus BBS versus Internet

[Christopher B. Brown]

Bringing in the "Bulletin Board" part demonstrates the crucial change; in yesteryear, a substantial part of the point to a "computer club" was often the fact that they ran a BBS to help coordinate disseminating news, discussion, and tools for the platform in question.

Back then, the issue of Long Distance Charges meant that it was expensive to talk to anyone far away, thus meaning that there was considerable value to replicating BBS material.

The growth of the Internet means that (with apologies to Mr Ed):

A host is a host, and coast to coast, nobody talks with a host that's close, unless the host that isn't close is busy, hung, or dead.

Where, fifteen years ago, communicating with software authors was quite daunting, it's easy enough now to bounce Linus Torvalds a note, or to find discussion specialized to my interests on a mailing list that joins participants on multiple continents, or to download patches from ftp.debian.org

The Internet does nothing directly to eliminate the need for human interaction; when it destroys user groups, this occurs as a result of:

• Them being so tied to supporting communications technologies (like BBSes) that when the value of that disappears, the "social" value disappears;
• There being little nontechnical activity.

Re:MIT SIPB having similar issues

[Trepidity]

10 years ago undergraduates couldn't run Unix in their dorm room, or even have networking. If they wanted to hack they had to come to SIPB. The machines in the office used to be a big draw. That is not so anymore. Unix workstations that we can afford are comparable to freshman's new Intel machine. Our fastest workstations are rivalled by my $800 Linux box.

So in other words, since joining these clubs is no longer necessary in order to obtain access to UNIX machines, more and more students are giving the finger to the elitist assholes who run the clubs and buying their own Linux boxes. Good.

Re:It's Berkeley, dammit!

[Richy_T]

Hah. You should talk. You Yanks can't even pronounce it right.

Rich

Times change

[bmongar]

It would be a shame to say the club is dying. In the traditional sence yes, but as was said it is due to collaboration over the internet. So instead of saying the club and it's purpose is dying, let's say anyone can be a member now, if not of the club of it's purpose.

Clubs V. Internet?

[Kiss the Blade]

Back in the Eighties, I was a member of many computer clubs and user groups, usually specialising in 8 bit computers such as the Spectrum, of course. They were an excellent place to make friends and learn about computing.

Now though, I find that there are not nearly as many computing clubs to be found, at least where I live. Has the Internet sounded the death knell for computer clubs?

It would seem that old-fashioned face-to-face contact is somehow becoming unfashionable. The Internet does not provide an adequate replacement for physical socialising. I also suspect that the quality of work that gets done over the internet is of an inferior quality. This is to be expected though, given the lack of acceptable criticism that the Internet engenders. Criticism is usually dismissed as 'flaming' and is ignored. In real life such behaviour would be more muted, and would be responded to.

Hopefully, one day, people will realise that the Internet is not a panacea for all of societys Ills, and is not a replacement for society. I hope to see the rise of computer clubs again one day.

KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

XCF like organizations will always be important

[eXtro]

I don't see that the Open Source community means that the XCF or clubs such as it will die. If it is dying it is probably more of a case of no longer having a champion who is willing to go the extra mile to keep it running.

Localized groups of people with above average expertise (or willing to work to learn the above average expertise) can have a strong advantage over an equally sized distributed Open Source project. Being able to walk down a hall or spin your chair 180 degrees and bounce ideas back and forth is a very powerful winnowing tool. The entrance requirements to the XCF help to maintain a high caliber of members (propose a major project).

Re:Groups in Internet vs. Meatspace

[nibelung]

I have noticed that a lot of these computer clubs dissapeared over the last 10 years. I would not blame this on the internet, but on closed systems like Windows and game consoles. This particular club may be an exception in that it is a university club (Berkeley!), but most of these clubs consist of a variety of people from everyday life (aka 'common people').

In the old days (yeah, nearly 30 i am) tinkering with your computer was encouraged by the media, and you did not need anything special to start since the computer booted into a simple development environment, and going to a computer club to share experience (and software ;-) was just natural. That is where i met my programming buddies... learned a lot from them. With a windows box, you have to be pretty desperate (or paid) to try and program anything. Hacking windows is way too complex for a beginner, and no fun at all... how is a 'hacker club' supposed to form around it?

I think one of the only reasons why there still are clubs like these is the fact that open software like the GNU development tools, Linux, BSD etc have been with us since the rise of MS Windows.

My guess is that in the next decade the number of clubs like this will grow again thanks to increasing addoption of GNU/Linux/*BSD, and the Internet will help instead of hinder: it will be much easier to communicate and cooperate without having to travel around (read cycle along, since few hackers have cars or are old enough to drive where i live).

BTW i found this article way too sentimental and nostalgic. They make it sound like the end is nigh!

I kind of hope XCF does dissolve

[Adam J. Richter]

It is not a reflection on the XCF's current membership, but it is important to understand that the XCF was created by destroying a public (to the student body at least) free student-run computing facility, the Undergraduate Computing Facility. The equipment and space was essentially given to XCF in the belief that they would continue the UCF, but instead the founders created a private facility for themselves.

As a result, for more than a year, there was no public access computing for undergraduates, and it took a long time and a lot of work to rebuild what XCF co-opted, eventually in the form of UC Berkeley's Open Computing Facility.

Over the past fifteen years, some significant software was written at XCF, especially after they started releasing source code. And, certainly, eliminting the "Exclusive Computing Facility", as we called it, rather than just making it more open, would not have helped anyone. However, there is no doubt in my mind that for a school as big as Berkeley with such a long history of system software development, that more and better development would have been done had XCF been a more open facility from the outset, and it would have defined the campus programming community in a much more postive way.

By now, surely, none of the current XCF members had anything to do with its bloody founding, fifteen years ago. There has been public computing at Cal for a long time (at least as of the last time I checked), and multitasking computers are ubiquitous. So, the significance of the XCF to me now is only symbolic. However, as an alumnus, I would somehow feel better about about Cal to see the experimental computing club reconstituted into something that does not claim to be the legacy of the founding of the XCF. The current members do not deserve the dishonor of that association.

It's Carleton Vs. Ottawa U

[rlowe69]

I hate to break this to you, but Ottawa is quickly becoming one of the biggest high-tech hubs in Canada. Given the technology companies that surround us here in Ottawa, it's not surprising that the universities are trying to offer a more challenging curriculum to the students.

It is a shame though that this leaves us less time for other things (ie. a social life), but this is the "bad" you have to take with being in this industry. Do you really think that it's going to get any better in the Real World (TM)? - where employers expect you to work minimum 50 hour weeks to pull your weight? Forget it - this is just a warm-up.

Frankly, I'm glad that the universities in Ottawa have some motivation to improve. The general morale of the engineering department at the University of Ottawa is sad at best. Students regularly expect extensions and grade curves from their professors, which requires profs to set easier exams and starts a vicious cycle.

On the other hand, if universities are fighting for students, they have to create a more exciting, challenging program. If they have to weed out people by giving them challenging assignments, then good for the administration for not backing down and easing up. It's about time the universities in Ottawa started on the road to improving their caliber of students. Maybe someday their programs will be right up there with other Canadian universities like Waterloo and U of Toronto, thus motivating them to improve - one of those beneficial cycles.

As for computing clubs, one only has to look at the computing labs to see that a lot of people do their homework at home now, instead of there. This leads to a lot of people getting to the same mistakes and having no one to ask. Granted profs are getting better with e-mail and message boards, but a little face-to-face contact in order to solve simple problems (especially in the first two years) would be better, of course.

I think the bigger issue is where people's motivations lie. People don't want to hang out at school all day in a small computer club room. People have jobs to pay for work, people have social lives (yes, even engineers and computer scientists - I highly recommend one - heh). I think more and more people are realising that if you think about one area too much (ie. computers) you will just burn your brain out. Relaxation is the key, and everyone is different in that respect.

So what to do from here? Start out small. Make a club for people helping people with their homework, even if its on the net. When the community has been built, you might find that people with common interests want to work on a side project. Granted, you may not have much time for it ... :)

Ryan Lowe
3 years in Computer Engineering and now in Software Engineering year 2
University of Ottawa
rlowe@[NOSPAM]planetquake.com

A clone of Photoshop is experimental?

[Junks Jerzey]

I'd hesitate to use a Photoshop-wannabe as the poster child of an experimental technology group. It's kinda like those groups of high school kids who start faux game companies "dedicated to innovative ideas" who write fancy versions of Tetris and Breakout.

Geek "society" is dying 'cause "we won"

[boster]

This parallels the sad demise of old school science fiction fandom (a culture I grew up in, thus making me one of the youngest old-fart fans).

As with hackerdom, fandom is dying as SF has become so mainstream. It's no longer weird to read SF (not that people are actually reading it these days -- insert bashing of media fans here), so the social rewards of joining the sub-culture just aren't there. If you want to meet like-minded people into SF, just go two doors down. Or find other hackers by getting online...

Now the real question is (and I'm not prepared to answer it): Which was a better situation for the geek? (a) Being part of a tight-knit, special community, (b) or having wider acceptance and recognition without the community there (or at least replaced by a dilluted version)....

Re:Who else has an XCF?

[Forkenhoppen]

How lively is it, though? Carleton University has a chapter too, but it looks like it's pretty much dead. (Uh, check out the programming contest page..)

Bowling Alone

[David Hume]

It would seem that old-fashioned face-to-face contact is somehow becoming unfashionable. The Internet does not provide an adequate replacement for physical socialising.

You might be interested in the book (and website) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which addresses at least some of your concerns regarding the need for "physical socialising."

There is an article by the author of the book, Robert Putnam, here: Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.

There is an interview with the author here: An interview with Robert Putnam about America's collapsing civic life.

MIT SIPB having similar issues

[tibbettsatmit]

I am one of the undergraduate members of the MIT SIPB (Student Information Processing Board), the MIT equivalent of the XCF. We are an older group (founded in 1969) and are less hardcore then what XCF came off as in the Salon article (though I believe that is because of Salon's portrayal rather than a real difference). We have a similar system for evaluating new members. And we have a similar (though much less severe) recent problem with recruitment.

I believe that the problems with recruitment are not due to collaboration between people over the Internet, or even to freshman coming in with a hacker support community already formed on the net. The bigger issue is that being a geek is not such a socially unacceptable flaw anymore, especially around MIT.

Two things used to drive people to the SIPB: Access to good hardware and people with whom to geek. Both of these encouragements are starting to slip away. And the social barrier to entering SIPB has always been high, due in large part to elitism among its members and the perception of elitism by the community.

10 years ago undergraduates couldn't run Unix in their dorm room, or even have networking. If they wanted to hack they had to come to SIPB. The machines in the office used to be a big draw. That is not so anymore. Unix workstations that we can afford are comparable to freshman's new Intel machine. Our fastest workstations are rivalled by my $800 Linux box. And providing even faster machines would not really help. I don't need an Ultra60 to hack on.

The draw of people to geek with is still strong though. That is what keeps me and others coming back to the SIPB office. Between current members and the cruft (members who are no longer students) who hang around there is an alarmingly high density of real world computer experience. Its a great place to go to have people tell you your new design is crap or your idea for a company will fail. But more and more students never feel that attraction, never feel the need to hang out with other geeks.

In some way this is because of the net, and the fact that these students come in with support networks. But even more than that it is the omniprecense of geeks at MIT. People who need their fix of geeky social interaction in real space can usually get it in their living group. The odds are there are a couple of people who run Linux and understand when you talk about your projects. They aren't very useful when it comes to critique, but you can get expertise online. People who would have become SIPB addicts^Wmembers in the past now get by on geek methadone, amply available in their current social groups.

Its a difficult problem to solve. I don't have a solution, or I would have deployed it at MIT. Sometimes we think that people don't know about us. We have talked about Slashdot (a common brand of methadone) banner ads targetted to net-18. But really the problem is harder than telling people we exist. It is to convince people that our membering process is worth the time and effort, and that we are a social group they want to join.

We are not dying. We do not have significantly fewer members then we have had in the past. But people no longer seek us out. Many of our members finally get over their inneria and join when their existing social scene flies apart. Others (like me) get dragged in by people in their living group and eventually get members by virtue of having sat around the office so much. But this year we didn't get any freshman. They don't realize that they need us, yet.

Why the XCF is valuable

[bluninja]

Pursuant to my previous remark, the XCF has produced a ton of valuable software and technology. I still refer to Ali's networking K0D library, for example. Viola, GTK, GIMP, glib, GNU JSP, lots of Gnutella tending, Linux hacks, FreeBSD hacks, Java hacks, C and C++ hacks and on and on.

Here's a little testimony: http://dale.oreillynet.com/stories/storyReader$31.

But none of that is important. That's all kinetic, or realised potential. The potential to do more than that is what is important.

When I was there I got to learn from Spencer Kimball, Pete Mattis, Ali Rahimi, Tracy Scott, Yaroslav Faybishenko, Misha Dynin, Josh MacDonald and many other people. A team of individuals. XCF members empowered each other by bringing together a great pool of knowledge and experience.

It's been a concern of mine for years that the wide spread of cheap computers and connectivity encourages people to stay home instead of going to labs to interact with their peers. This is the problem the XCF faces now. Having coded in the XCF and at home, I wish entirely that I could return to the days of the XCF. It was just more productive and more fun.

XCF members were brutal against boring projects and idiocy. Praise was rationed. There was no sense of political correctness and ego maintenance typical in the modern workplace. Respect was measured by quality of product, i.e. not by who you knew or how many papers you shipped about the code that stayed moored. I dream of the level of productivity achievable in a commercial XCF.

The XCF was uniquely a place of product staffed by members who transcended the one-dimensional geeky lameness endemic to tech-centric societies. We did cool things like race BMWs in Palo Alto and get drunk together. Huh huh *snort* huh.

Gene

Re:Computing clubs, and The internet

[American AC in Paris]

You're being deliberately obtuse here.

I'd argue otherwise; I'd state that you assume the user already knows far more about the system than they actually do. A newbie is thrust into an environment that is completely and utterly foreign to them. Even if the pertinent information is readily available, there is such an overabundance of 'expert' information that it quickly and easily overwhelms an individual with anything less than genuine need to learn a system (i.e. CS students, people whose jobs rely on learning the system, etc.)

All the information necessary to use the basic command correctly is right there. Sure, all the stuff you mention above may be confusing at first glance, but all you have to do is actually read instead of letting your eyes glaze over, and when you come across a concept or phrase you don't understand, go look that up. It's not rocket science.

Of course it's not rocket science. If it were, not even a handful of the self-taught Unix/Linux geeks would exist. What I am saying is that it is not even remotely easy, and that drives a huge potential base of users away after struggling through man pages for only six hours (if even that.) Why insist that Bob Newbie subject himself to an hours' worth of hunting for a command to move file A to directory B ('cp' is not the most intuitive of mnemonics, regardless of how used to is we all are; 'man copy' returns a painfully technical synopsis of kernel copy functions;) when he could learn the same information quickly, easily, and in a (potentially) very friendly manner with a full one minute of a knowledgable users' time? Yeah, it's not rocket science. I sure as hell ain't easy, though.

This is why I am not an author of UNIX books - they'd be way too short. Chapter 1: log in. Chapter 2: type "man man" and hit return. Chapter 3: start reading.

I tried just that. I logged in (easy enough, most newbies understand the login/password concept readily enough) typed 'man man', and started reading. Some of the things I learned:

• "man 'name'" displays the BSD manual pages entitled 'name'. Easy enough, and quite useful.
• There are a buttload of options one can use with man, and I don't really know which ones are important, if any.
• I should go back through and re-read "man man" later, after I try playing with it. It looks like a really powerful tool.

Armed with this information, I proceeded to do the following:

• man dir (directory file format, extensive technical information on dirent.h)
• man directory (directory operations. I'll try a few! Let's see, "opendir" seems like a good start.)
• opendir (opendir: command not found.)
• man folder (man: no entry for folder in the manual.)
• help (yikes--some of that shot off my screen, and the rest looks pretty formidable. Upon close examination, it appears that help accepts arguments of it's own. We'll assume that the newbie understands arguments.)
• help pattern (no help topics match 'pattern'. Try 'help help'. (Eureka!))
• help help (OK, that explains what I saw the first time. It was a listing of all the builtin functions. I'll do 'help' again and start going through the different built-in functions...)

That's just painful. How much junk should a newbie have to try digging through to get to the meat of the system? Why must one's basic UNIX education be one of blood, sweat, tears, flames, and RTFM? Why not actually lend a hand and answer some of the seemingly insultingly simple questions posed?

$ man reality

Perl Mongers

[oneiros27]

Not quite what I'd consider a club on the same scale, but I've been members of two chapters of the Perl Mongers, and they're still going. They're prone to fluctuations like all groups, but they're still out there for those of you looking to pal around and talk geek in person.

(But the closest that I knew to a club were computer gaming groups -- every month or two a bunch of us would drag out computers over to a friend's house, connect to his switch [parts of his ISP were still in his house] and try to kill each other in wargames, FPS, etc. Not as much geek talk going on there, but it happened once in a while.

Groups in Internet vs. Meatspace

[lwagner]

As has been said earlier, I think it is somewhat of a temporary tragedy that meeting in person loses out to Internet groups.

The reason is that I've noticed a lot of conversation on the Internet is often done with flaming and politics... and this includes free software/OSS development.

People seem to work better via personal contact because there is so much more information transmitted about a person and who the person is.

As I said, I think this is more of a temporary thing because we will soon have a way to collaborate using higher-bandwidth technologies that will be able to make meeting online much like meeting in person.
--

Computing clubs, and The internet

[Lumpy]

Computer clubs, computing clubs in particular are a strange breed. Many are groups of guys that like platform A, or hardware B (of which this loyality is now non-existant... the TI-99/4a club,the TRS-80 club, the Apple club .... etc.. now except for apples, everything is a mutt of hardware, no one manufacturer and no one basic design.) Now we have OS clubs.. (Although I have never seen a windows club.... go figure!) Linux, OS/2, BSD,BeOS,BlobX....etc... but the whole "scene" of the club is always the same... a core of talented people, a hub of wannabe's (which are good, teach them!) and the group of users/wanna run everything's. You know, they guys that want to run it like a meeting, take minutes, rehash the last meeting, etc... bla bla bla... Now the techies, we hate this crap, the users? they hate the techies.... we want to to cool things, they want to advertise.... etc.... it goes on.

The internet has given the techie communication to a larger group of techies, this way we can avoid the administrative users. But who loses? the wannabees. Who is going to teach 12 year old Johhny down the street how to write a device driver? Who is going to help 13 year old Susie debug her assembly routenes? all the techies are on the net. and if you ask a newbie question in the "leet rooms" you get flamed,and then kick/banned. RTFM is our cry. it is our mantra... and we act suprised or superior when their mantra is "A**HOLE" or we hear "Damn Geeks, think they are better than us."

It's because we cause it. Us techies, we drive away the newbies. we chase away the wannabees. because we like our discussions about the obscure corners of IPv6 and will not stoop to helping someone use vi for the first time.

We ruined the clubs. and we are thinning the pool of talent by acting like jerks.

Want to fix it? then be a mentor to someone. next time someone asks a newbie question ANSWER IT and flame the self leet idiot that flamed the newbie. welcome wannabees with open arms .

It's simple, but alas, it will never happen. It is counter to geek culture.