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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."
Interesting insights.
I wonder, how does one become a great hacker? How do you make yourself a great hacker? I'm not sure it's possible...I mean, I know you can do a lot of things to make yourself dumb, but what can you do to make yourself smart?
I guess a good part of it comes from working on what inspires you, and what makes you happy. In general, I find that it's very difficult to make very smart people do things they don't want to do.
I suppose that in order to accomplish something important, it has to be important to you. It could be that you love it. Obviously, if you can keep alive the zest for programming you had when you were young, then you're bound to do well. If your current profession is making you senile, then you're probably not going to keep that hacker spark going.
I think the real issue must be inquisitiveness. I find that good hackers are very curious about the world around them. Ultimately, that must be the answer. To be a good hacker, you must have a genuine thirst for knowledge, and a desire to improve things for those around you. Sounds good to me.
Anyone who spends their time improving software is doing us all a favor... that's why my screensaver at work has always said: 'Hackers are great'.
It took some explaining to convince my boss that "hackers" wasn't a negative term, but since then I've received nothing but compliments from other geeks in the office.
Hackers are great!
+ Donald Gunth
+ Email: dgunth@quicktek.net
"Caffeine is the greatest lubricant ever created." -ESR
Second, and I'll probably be modded as troll for this, but all the programmers I know who like perl are sysadmin types who don't know better. Popularity isn't a much better measure of "goodness" in the open-source world than it is anywhere else.
Graham may make some good points but he's SO far out in left field on others that his credibility is shot as far as I'm concerned.
Is suited to people who simply want to write large bodies of maintainable code. It's not intended for small hacks, nor is it intended for being close-to-the-metal.
The idea that one must automatically be a crap programmer because one likes Java is an egotistical and obnoxious point of view. I happen to like Python and C and C++ as well as Java, and I use all of those on occassion, but Java is no less a suitable and appropriate language to use for some tasks as any of those other languages.
I'm sorry, but Graham's dismissive attitude towards Java is evidence of extreme arrogance.
Did he mention that these Great Hackers have quote possibly some of the greatest creative minds in the world. Sure you have to know what your doing, but the ability to think outside yourself, see the bigger picture, is what makes these guys great. When you come across a problem that may seem impossible to get a work around for, these guys think and think, and they get their solution because they are able to see a myriad of different perspecvtives as a possible solution to a really tough problem. these guys are paid the big bucks because they do have that extra quality as well as being good hackers. i think thats what separates the good, from the great.
Now I would classify myself as a hacker, but cant play a musical instrument (CD player isn't a musical instrument right?) and sci-fi gives me a softie. Dig guns though.
IMHO a good/great hacker must be prepared to go where he wants to with confidence. Don't just take on everyone else's mindset (if you do what the other 6 billion people are doing you're not going to do anything worthwhile). In short, scratch your own itch.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Not all jobs are that way - sometimes overhearing what the other people around you are talking about is more useful to overall productivity. And some people can concentrate even with lots of background noise. But for a lot of people, offices would have been more productive than cubicles.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
He's right. You guys are so personally offended you can't see the forest for the trees.
/. crowd. In your opinion, who's the most likely hacker?
He's talking about hackers here, kids. Not 90% of the
a. sysadmin
b. java developer
c. janitor
Personally, I'm voting for (a). (A) because most sysadmins deal with perl, lots of unix systems, they know *nix inside and out.
Java guys are out of the question, they're too wrapped up in their baby blankets sucking their thumbs to realize they are not _in_ the group we're speaking of.
Janitors, well, it's possible, but probably not common.
I'm a sysadmin, and I user perl all day long. Sometimes at night, when a brute force ssh attack comes along. I need to know which exploits are out there, I'm constantly trying to break my system. I'm constantly learning about the newest buffer overflows in solaris. I am intimately aware of memory space in the kernel. I don't live in a Java Dream World (tm). I don't have all day long to dream of how, if java were tangible matter, it'd be able to cure world hunger. I'm too busy living in the Real World(tm).
In conclusion, while it's uncommon to have good hackers know they're good, it's a lot more common to have a bunch of wanna-bes think they are "the hackers".
Graham essentially spouts a lot of geek cred virtues that suit the stereotype of hackers that we all, in some way, want to be. So we all read the article, see a little bit of ourselves in it ("yeah, I'm pretty politically incorrect, too."), and feel good about how special we are. Just like astrology profiles based on your sign contain a lot of qualified compliments ("you speak your mind, sometimes offending other people without meaning to."), Graham's articles have a constant thread of "geeks are special, and you're a geek, too."
Taken literally, the people Graham is talking about are perhaps 2-3% of the coding population. In other words, they're the equivalent of supermodels, rock stars, and brilliant twentysomething CEOs, and just as accessible to you or me. In practical terms, you'll almost never, ever work with, hire, or be the kind of person he's discussing, so put down the geek wank material.
Every time I read a Graham article, I feel dirty at the amount of false modesty and self-congratulation involved. He's like a digital Stuart Smalley.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
If you look at what a good joiner uses, you'll note that he has a large set of tools, and picks the right one. There is no advantage in trying to turn wood on a lathe with a screwdriver - that's the job of a chisel.
A similar thing applies with computational work. If you truely know what you are doing, you'll use the right tool for the job. If your wanting to accumulate a large set of facts, and then do some comparisons across that set of facts, that's a job for Prolog. No matter that C, or Java, or Perl, or whatever, is more popular. They are just a poor fit to the task, which would mean you'd need to write a predicate logic packeage in them, to get them to work.
Look at tools like FFTW. It's written in OCaml, and C. Two different languages, each used seperatly, to play to thier strengths. OCaml does tree parsing, and optimising of an abstract syntax tree. C code does the numerical heavy lifing. That's choosing the right (rather, a good, there is a pluraity of good tools for that) tool for the job. Trying to do the abstract syntax tree parsing in C, or the numerical heavy lifting in OCaml is just stupid - you'll end up with something that's nowhere near as good.
Try writing an OS kernel in Perl.
'Favourite language' is something that's not a good metric. 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.
Claiming that 'good hackers like language X' misses the whole point. Good hackers will use the best tool for the job.
Also, Graham seems to be conviently ignoring the 'can this be understood three years down the line' aspect. There is no point in having code that you can't maintain. That's where Java comes in - it's got a blend of power and syntactic salt help keep things maintainable. Asserting that maintainabilty isn't relevant just strikes me as something that's, well, immature.
I believe that he mentioned this because the guys at the startup viewed 'hacker' to refer to themselves, not to the crackers that they knew the marketers intended, and that they probably did in fact hate working on the AS/400 -- thus making the truth of the headline (for them) ironic.
:) Since, as you point out, the AS/400 is a secure box, the humor comes from the headline being true in both a literal AND an ironic sense simultaneously.
I thought it was pretty funny, actually.
Software maintenance is the single largest portion of the software life cycle. (IMHO)
So, why would I as chief programmer or system architect on a software project (that has a budget) allow pieces of the of software system to be built with languages that the 'common' programmer doesn't know? Sure, you could spend money training all the 'lesser' programmers in Python and/or PERL but, why waste the money? There are perfectly good languages that are defacto standard, provide loads of functionality, development tools, and are known by the 'so-called common' programmer. Every language has its pros and cons. So, if Java's weakness is uber-hackers don't like to use it than PERL's and Python's is maintainability. :) )
(However, I think author might be poking the tiger with comments like: "Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java." And we all feel right into that trap... I know I did.
Also, the single most important resource on a software project is people (again IMHO). Typical development scenario: New contract has been acquired. So, you as the "boss" hired 10 developers for the new project. One of which falls in the author's super-elite hacker class. The project's initial system delivery goes as smooth as glass cause the 'brains' of the operation (or the 1% as the author calls it) did majority of the work. Well, shortly after the initial delivery the hacker decides the project is now boring, the system was delivered and he or she is now looking for a new challenge. He or she now leaves the program and/or company. Now, there is a serious issue. Since the hacker did 90% of the work, now 90% of the core knowledge of how to maintain the system has left as well. (And I don't care who you are. Jesus himself couldn't write software that is perfect the first time. Bugs are always present and requirements can and do change. And Jesus also can microwave a burrito so hot he himself couldn't eat it!)
Given the author's profile of the hacker- Quiet, anti-social and loves his/her corner office with the door locked (which is a BS stereo-type)probably also didn't bother to pass any knowledge on to anyone else on the project. So, tell me again why this person was 'the most valuable thing' to us and the delivered system?
I personally love working with people are technically sharp but, also like working with other people and sharing info. I have caught myself being sort of elitist when I was the technical authority on something. But what does that gain you? Nothing in my experience. You want to be respected by your peers and co-workers? Share with them your knowledge not just lines of code (be it byte-code or interpreted scripts).
We are blind to the Worlds within us
waiting to be born...
i read in the jargon file once that you cannot "become" a hacker -- rather, others must bestow it upon you. you have to earn it. you can't buy it. you can't decide you are. Yeah, you have to do stuff, but you should be doing it just because. Then others will decide you are a "hacker"
The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
"It was really interesting until he pointed out that great hackers work differently than I do, at which point it became clear that he is a moron."
I know there have been flame wars about using the word "hacker" for years, and I certainly don't want to start another one. I don't care if people use the term as a pejorative or a badge of honor. I don't care if it means a computer criminal or software developer. I don't care if it means white hat or black hat. That's a debate best left back in 1985.
;) But I don't think this view represents the majority of developers; it may not even represent the majority of open source developers. The hacker/craftsman camp is a small minority.
But having said that, I think it's time we retire the word "hacker". The reason I think this is because the use of this word, which is supposed to be so positive: the curious, problem-solving tinkerer, isn't really that positive anymore. I'm talking about hackers as craftsmen (another word the author uses in the article). Defining software development as a craft harkens back to a an age when the industry was young and still defining itself. An age when the industry was hidden behind equipment in a backoffice or university machine room populated by bright-but-eccentric pioneers. A time when the industry, and its pioneers, didn't know what its Best Practices were. Those days are over.
Today, the industry has matured in many ways. Today, projects, and the organizations that manage them, don't want a tinkerer who will sit in the backoffice and figure stuff out. They want well-rounded individuals who can gather and interpret requirements, communicate with their team, and develop elegant, well-designed solutions using best practices. They want Software Engineers and Software Architects.
There is still a camp out there that is resisting this change. They still believe in the craftsman lifestyle, and they still code with emacs (oops, another flame war!
The author makes the point that some developers are so much more productive than their peers because of how they use technology, but does he realize that those productive developers are not hackers/craftsmen pecking out PHP or perl in their emacs session? They are Software Engineers using latest-generation tools and languages, design patterns and best practices, object-oriented techniques and integration technologies like message queues, not to mention web services and remoting. And incidently, they're still employable.
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
A computer is a machine for getting wrong answers quickly.
Perl can help with that.
Or maybe they tried it and found it lacking?
And what is this fascination with OOP? The only task I can think of (please name some more if can think of any) that lends itself naturally towards OOP is GUI/Widget handling. Everything else is much better expressed using so-called "sum types" (read about ML to find out what they are) and pattern matching.
Forcing everything into the OOP way of thinking without even considering that e.g. the functional/declarative way of doing things might be better suited to some tasks is certainly not clever. So much for Ruby (and Java, but the Java people probably didn't know any better at the time).
HAND.
how about something more important, like integrated OOP. nothing's worse than claiming to be heavily object oriented, that has a bolted on OOP model.
OMG, not the Ruby cliche again.
Python is not by any stretch less OO than Ruby. Having first class functions is not a liability, it's a strength. Object model is not bolted on Python - everything in Python is an object.
python reminds me so much of windows. everyone uses it, because it's all they know exists.
Ruby people go to great lengths to attack Python at every opportunity. For the most part this appears to be because modern Python renders Ruby pretty much irrelevant. Ruby is not really better than Python as a language, period. Ruby is better than Perl, and pretty much equivalent to Python on all linguistic accounts, but loses royally on maturity, community and industrial popularity.
Offset that with the fact that most Rubyistas that talk crap about Pythonistas don't really have experience with Python, but merely reiterate the misunderstandings of other Rubyistas. Repeating a lie often enough doesn't make it true - it makes for mediocre advocacy that might catch a few clueless perl refugees, but isn't going to work for "great hackers" which is the topic of today.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak