Paul Graham On 'Great Hackers'

dcgrigsby writes "Always interesting, if not unbiased, Paul Graham has published a new article on 'Great Hackers', discussing why Perl and Python are apparently better than Java, on why Microsoft developers get offices, and a host of other sure-to-be-controversial stuff."

Comments

Canadian Mullets

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember standing behind him [Trevor Blackwell] making frantic gestures at Robert to shoo this nut out of his office so we could go to lunch. Robert says he misjudged Trevor at first too. Apparently when Robert first met him, Trevor had just begun a new scheme that involved writing down everything about every aspect of his life on a stack of index cards, which he carried with him everywhere. He'd also just arrived from Canada, and had a strong Canadian accent and a mullet.

Thereby *really* standing out as an nutjob oddball.

When he starts comparing languages...

[SnapShot]

When he starts comparing languages or, to be more specific, makes the blanket statement that better hackers like Python over Perl I am reminded of the fact that the best hackers actually use OCAML and Objective-C.

"No they don't", you cry, "the best hackers user Assembly and Visual Basic".

"No, you're a fucking moron", someone else pipes up, "the best hackers use Pascal and COBOL."

"No, you are a fuckwit," a voice from the back of the croud screams, "Fortran and Algol are the languages of the best hackers".

"Quiet you fools," an elderly guru from the wings yells out, "I happen to know that the best hackers use Perl when they aren't dictating their programs to their secretaries to be outsourced to Taiwan to be compiled into Haskell"

"Shows what you know old man", a kid in the front row sneers, "the l33t hax0rs use Lisp and C++".

Well anyway, it looks like this might go on for a while, please enjoy the other comments while we try and work this out...

Re:When he starts comparing languages...

[Bull999999]

You left out binary on punch cards. Now that's "L33T HaX0rz sHiZ" yo!

Re:Great hackers use Perl and Python?

[Amiga Lover]

Apparently not because if he was he would have coded the kernel in Perl!!

I put forward to you... vmlinux.NET

True languages of hackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whitespace and Intercal.

Incendiarially

[smittyoneeach]

(Incidentally, I think this is what people mean when they talk about the "meaning of life." On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn't an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise. ) I think this is what you call a theological question. Besides than the Adams approach (Douglas or Scott), I think the other reasonable approach to the question is to humbly admit that it's like describing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter; the actual answer overflows the finite brain.
Walk humbly during all the days of your vanity, and look forward to an eternity when all will be revealed.
Oh, and use emacs.

Re:Article text (in case of slashdotting)

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is to say you didn't post as the AC, claiming Karma Whoring, and then reply to yourself, non-anonymously pointing out the grandfather post was AC, all simply to get yourself modded up as Insightful?

THAT'S META KARMA-WHORING; OMG!

Re:Java

[Thing 1]

(and C#, which is Java + 1)

I may be like the last guy to get on the boat, but I just realized through your parenthetical remark that "C#" is a lot like "C++" squished together: the "#", when separated, is two plus signs.

I had some cool ASCII art showing what I meant but the fucking lameness filter wouldn't let it through, even with a ton of extra text around the art. So, just imagine that the top line and left line form the first "+", and the bottom line and right line form the second "+", and then pull them apart, the first to the top and left and the second to the bottom and right, and you'll have seen what I saw when I read your comment.

Not that it helps me understand the language any, but I thought it was a neat "pun".

Re:Java

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

the ascendance of Java (and C#, which is Java + 1)

A great hacker would have said Java++ .. ;)

It's too bad...

[PsiPsiStar]

... that he didn't talk about people who like to break into and control systems. I would love to see an article entitled "Paul Grahm on great crackers"

Ba dum bum!

Re:Tool for the job.

[Steve G Swine]

I've solved problems (and that's what it's all about) using 50 lines of C feeding 100 lines of Fortran feeding 50 lines of Perl producing Postscript that compiled to the desired diagrams, because that's what suited the problem domains best.

Please tell me you destroyed the source immediately afterward, or at least that no maintainer knows your name.

I fear for your life the first time someone wants one little change.

Re:Java

[SageMusings]

Ahem, cough, CPAN........

Re:Great hackers use Perl and Python?

[Anonymous Coward]

"coded the kernel in Perl"

Scariest... idea... EVER...

Aaaaaannnnd now, introducing for the first time ever - the One Line Kernel!!!*

*Line contains 6 billion characters, none of which are spaces, and is coded in logic sufficiently dense that gzip is unable to compress it. Any human being able to understand it should be removed to a padded room immediately.

Re:Java

[lewp]

Actually, a great hacker would have said ++Java ;).

I'm doomed!

[bob_jenkins]

OMG, I write in C and Java, my OS is Windows ME, I'm willing to fix bugs in 20-year-old code, and it's taken me over two weeks so far to write a simple stream cipher + MAC! I must be lousy!

Re:Java Vs. perl

[Anonymous Coward]

who's the most likely hacker?

a. sysadmin
b. java developer
c. janitor

Personally, I'm voting for (a).

[...]

I'm a sysadmin

Well, surprise, surprise!

Re:Astrology for Geeks

[ameoba]

I'd take Graham over John Katz any day...