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Eric S. Raymond Unveils New List Of 'Hacker Archetypes' (ibiblio.org)
An anonymous reader writes:
Open source guru Eric S. Raymond has announced public brainstorming on a "gallery of hacker archetypes to help motivate newbies" by defining several different psychologies commonly found among programmers. He's unveiled an initial list developed with a friend, along with some interesting commentary. (Algorithmicists often have poor social skills and "a tendency to fail by excessive cleverness. Never let them manage anyone!")
Raymond cautions that "No hacker is only one of these" -- though apparently most of the hackers he knows appear to be two of them, "an indication that we are, even if imperfectly, zeroing in on real traits." But the blog post ends by asking "What archetypes, if any, are we missing?"
It'll be interesting to see if Slashdot readers if they recognize themselves in any of the archetypes. But the blog post also answers the inevitable question. What archetype is Eric S. Raymond?
"Mostly Architect with a side of Algorithmicist and a touch of Jack-of-All-Trades."
Raymond cautions that "No hacker is only one of these" -- though apparently most of the hackers he knows appear to be two of them, "an indication that we are, even if imperfectly, zeroing in on real traits." But the blog post ends by asking "What archetypes, if any, are we missing?"
It'll be interesting to see if Slashdot readers if they recognize themselves in any of the archetypes. But the blog post also answers the inevitable question. What archetype is Eric S. Raymond?
"Mostly Architect with a side of Algorithmicist and a touch of Jack-of-All-Trades."
Well TIL.
Imagine getting to be Internet famous today for writing a few extensions to a POP3 suite. Life was once pretty easy.
What archetypes, if any, are we missing?
The type for whom the journey (or development process) is all. They love creating something: code, hardware, paintings. And for them, it is the production that matters, not the the final result. You might call them "perfectionists" because they will never finish anything (until they get bored and just drop it, to start travelling on a different journey) and will constantly be adding new parts, features or functions.
Their favourite saying is "just another couple of weeks" when asked by their team-leader, project supervisor, manager when their assignment will be ready. But 2 weeks later, the answer is still the same. Although they are enthusiastic, their failure mode is that they never produce an end product and their office, lab or home is full of half-completed projects.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Maybe Eric S. Raymond should first look up in an urban dictionary what "hacker" and "hacking" actually means, before he writes lists of personality traits? Because he sure doesn't seem to have a clue about hackers and hacking culture.
The Idealist - Non flexible thinker, only effective if can do things it's way, doesn't play well with others. Has tendency to learn very slowly.
The Thinker -Thinks about the best way to do it, doesn't actually do anything, is content with the imagined results.
The opportunitist - refuses to let opportunity of putting back doors in code so can spy on others.
The pragmatic - Doesn't always understand, some how gets things to work. Sometimes has good intuition, sometimes smart, some times stupid, but usually just smart enough.
It assumes that a hacker is purely a programmer, and that's often not the case. I work in a physical science field, but a lot of my work involves developing programs to solve problems. That means developing and implementing parts of or entire processes in software and, sometimes, hardware. But I'm very applied because I have extensive knowledge of a physical science field.
I like to build these projects just because I like buidling stuff in hardware and software and seeing the completed system. Sometimes I'll jump in and help others when I know I can do something quicker and more efficiently, just to learn new stuff and prove to myself that, even 12 years after getting a CS degree, I still am good at what I do.
That said, I don't have patience for bullshit. We all fuck up and make mistakes. It happens. But I deal with college students who lack organization and maturity. I understand that, because I am far from being an organized person. However, when I fuck up, I take responsibility for it and try to make things right. Most of the time, when students fuck up, they claim it was random fate that they failed or blame me. If an entire class isn't learning anything and I'm teaching, that's probably my fault. If my class has a B average (85% for a general education class), your grade is 30% below the class average, and you've refused to get help, that's your fault. But in that situation, students still blame me, and it pisses me off. I respect hard work and I respect people who are good at what they do. I despise people who refuse to take responsibility and who have no curiosity in the world or interest in learning. Sadly, that describes a lot of people, which is why I don't fit in with a lot of circles.
I might partially fit a few of those categories, but I'm not purely a programmer or systems engineer.
Btw. Hackers aka. social degenerates / retards / ++aspergers / youfuckingnameit are also known by their monodiet consisting of pizza (Margherita) and Coca Cola.
And all managers are sexual freaks with psycopatic tendencies.
And all moderators are suffering from low self-esteem.
Now, who or what did i miss?
Why is this guy and others like him so intent on categorizing people, personalities, and traits? Just so they can stereotype people and then marginalize their ideas. Only egotistical people do that so they can feel superior to others. Congrats, you're just won the a**hole writer award.
Algorithmicists: Very good at algorithms and sustained, intricate coding. Have mathematical intuition, and are one of the two types (with Architect) that have the highest tolerance for complexity. They like the idea of correctness proofs and think naturally in terms of invariants. They gravitate to compiler-writing and crypto. Often solitary with poor social skills; have a tendency to fail by excessive cleverness. Never let them manage anyone!
I wonder if this is why I'm only allowed to start and end vacations on prime numbered days but only if the duration is a power of two. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Don't underestimate the role that esr had on the fledgling open source movement.
While his software accomplishments may be looked down upon by some, it was his role as a free thinker and a spiritual leader of the open source movement that was his greatest accomplishment.
Movements need leaders. These leaders act as a sort of "glue", tying together heterogeneous individuals and factions into one cohesive homogeneous movement. That's what esr did. His writings gave an entire community a common purpose, a common philosophy, and a common pattern of thought.
His role is much like that of Jimi Hendrix to the nascent hippy movement of the 1960s.
esr's vision set us down the path of success. He rallied many individuals and helped coordinate our efforts into creating the vibrant open source ecosystem we know today.
I used to go to Linux user group meetings where we would read an excerpt from "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and then we would collectively meditate upon its reading. His writings inspired millions of open source programmers, and without his guidance we wouldn't have been able to create the software and the community that we have created.
It's no mistake that he's considered part of the Open Source Trinity, along with rms and Linus. He's one of the pillars upon which the entire open source movement has been built. If you remove the contributions of rms, the open source movement never would have started. If you remove the contributions of Linus, the open source movement would have never reached the heights it reached today. If you remove the contributions of esr, the open source movement would have fractured and broken into nothingness.
esr is one of our main guiding lights. His vision and deep understanding of what it means to be open source has been invaluable. The open source movement owes its existence to esr, and that's why we pay tribute to what he has so graciously given us.
He is one, I have it on video.
Great. That's just what we need... the equivalent of MBTI for Hackers. Hey, maybe next April we can come up with a guide to Hackers' astrological signs! I'm sure that will be informative and totally not a navel-gazing waste of time.
He ignores SJWs like you. So should the rest of us. (Including me.)
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Praise be to Kek !
Hendrix was not an internet gadfly.
Whatever archetype sounds like a description of ESR, is a terrific all-around guy you'd want on your team. Heck, that person should be running the team, and given boatloads of stock options.
Whatever archetype contains traits and skills that ESR isn't especially known for... watch out. That person might look worthwhile at first, but you're in a world of hurt if you give them serious responsibility.
That thread is already so long I doubt it will make it in:
Accidental intruders: Exceptionally curious hackers with a broad knowledge and understanding of how different systems work and interrelate. These individuals thrive on and learn primarily by exploring any and every system they are given access to. These types of hackers do not break into anything that is not there's on purpose, but can easily break security and enter into a secured area without realizing they have broken in.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
At first I thought ESR posted that as AC, but then I remembered Mr. Poe's advice and read it again. Now I think it was written by Bruce Perens.
And Hendrix had a massive amount of real, verifiable, talent.
Originally, the art of using algorithms was called algorism so the person in question would be an algorist. The -ithm in algorithm was apparently added due to words like arithmetic.
I've also seen "algorithmist" which follows the common logic of adding -ist to a known concept, so that too would be somewhat acceptable.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Hah.
The list is missing quite a few archetypes: Gadfly, Narcissist, Sycophant, and Queen Bee among them.
I'm probably a JOAT. I understand broad concepts but I never got into the nitty gritty of anything. That drives recruiters up the wall because I'm willing to do anything and that makes it difficult for them to pigeonhole me beyond being an enterprise-level technician. I've done software testing for virtual worlds and video games, help desk/desktop support, PC refresh projects, built out a data center, hardware testing on 11AC-equipped laptops, and, currently, InfoSec remediation.
He also co-founded the OSI, and wrote quite a bit of technical documentation for Linux (HOWTOs). If we disparage technical writers, then we won't have technical documentation. It takes all sorts and he does a good job of it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is the kind of post-hoc hagiography that fuels Ayn Rand's objectivism crap mountain.
Out of these three, it's only hard to imagine a different, yet equally grand path if RMS had never occurred. His foundational dog work on binutils invited many others to host parties they could not have otherwise managed to throw.
Due to RMS as a unique personality, we got a highly political license sooner than we would have by another probable path. This was both a strength and a liability, whose relative magnitudes are almost impossible to judge in retrospect.
Without Linus, FreeBSD either would have become far more participatory, or some variant with a far greater embrace and tolerance of messiness would have forked within two years. And since this wouldn't have embraced GPL at the system level, Gnu HURD might even have been finished, with perhaps a necessary course correction or two under mounting pressure from a large install base.
Saying that open source wouldn't exist as it now does without ESR is pretty close to saying that the internet boom of the late nineties would not have happened without George Gilder. ("George who?" all the children ask. Exactly my point.)
Certainly charismatic figures come along when the moment is ripe to crystallize the zeitgeist, but history does not record that these people have ever been in short supply (something that would become immediately obvious if that stupid scheme from Atlas Shrugged had ever been tried for real in the real world.) Generally, you can never have more than a few of these types at any given time, because the human psychology of prophets and prophecy accrues special powers to the lone voice. A solitary howling wolf is divine revelation, a million howling wolves is just a statistical noise (see again the howlingly ludicrous legacy of one Ayn Rand).
A really capable technical guy who becomes the cornerstone of a new community, and then reveals that he's a homophobic gun nut?
Hey, maybe next April we can come up with a guide to Hackers' astrological signs!
I can see the punchline: Cancer afflicts one in twelve.
so the person in question would be an algorist
I guess that name would be associated with too many inconvenient truths.
Answer the following questions to understand which IT Power ranger you are!
1) Do you like Red? You are leader envy! You are a code monkey ranger!
2) Do you like blue? You are a Microsoft ranger that never test your code because you like BSOD!
3) Do you like Yellow? You are Pee ranger because I can't think of anything else in IT that is yellow.
4) Do you like green? You are puke ranger. See reason for Yellow ranger.
5) Do you like white? You are either Google ranger or LGBT ranger. Cos white is made up of rainbow Colours duh!
Me? I'm the One Ranger to rule them all! No that option is not available to you because there is only One..... seriously? You have to ask?
So which IT power ranger are you?
I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine. Your software is well written, functional. The Host File Engine performs exactly as promised by mmell
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant
I've never tried to belittle (APK's) work, I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon
take a look at the APK hosts file engine by SuperKendall
APK is kinda right. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works by bmo
I like your host file system by Karmashock
I find your hosts file admirable by vel-ex-tech
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg
* Recommended & hosted by Malwarebytes' hpHosts
APK
P.S.=> Didn't RTFA & I'm no 'hacker' so I don't know which stereotype I'd fit - See subject & /.ers opinions of my work above... apk
And you're throwing around the content-free SJW label around, demonstrating clearly to one and all that your opinion isn't worth the electrodes they're transmitted on.
SJW -really? At your age you ought to be ashamed of yourself!
Those are traits of people, not of hackers specifically.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I think it's like horoscopes or Chinese birth years or other kinds of cold reading. There's enough general stuff in there that you can always recognize something of yourself. But then as a Scorpio I am always going to be sceptical of such things.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
ESR was relevant at one time. Now ESR is a has-been and devolved to a paranoid, bat-shit crazy, 2nd Amendment, MRA, nut job. And in his brilliance he managed to accomplish all of those goals in one essay.
Thanks for stopping by to sing your own praises, Eric. Got anything to say about your epic meltdown when Linus rejected your package manager or whatever that was?
Remember when Eric threatened to punch Perens? Good times...
racist misogynist
Niether, and you fucking well know it, you lying little commie piece of shit.
I've read a lot of crap on /. over the years, but this takes the cake. Fucking lol
So is the original list from ESR...
"But the blog post also answers the inevitable question. What archetype is Eric S. Raymond?"
Uhhh, no, that just answers the question "what archetype does Eric S. Raymond THINK he is?" Come on, the man is a narcissistic self-promoter with vile political views and a very flimsy "hacker" resume.
I dont see Sharpshooters are the opposite to Architects. Design from the bottom up, simplify from the top down, its the only way to perfection.
Or, maybe that explains why i never finish anything...
or do i ?
Each archetype really needs a picture!
See the Flame Warriors Guide as an example.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
Not an adherent of the "great man" theory of history then?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It does take people to advocate for ideas, but the time usually has to be right too.
Reminds me of Antonio Gramsci's comments on economic change: http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-g...
"Gramsci was concerned to eradicate economic determinism from Marxism and to develop its explanatory power with respect to superstructural institutions. So, he held that:
* Class struggle must always involve ideas and ideologies, ideas that would make the revolution and also that would prevent it;
* He stressed the role performed by human agency in historical change: economic crises by themselves would not subvert capitalism;
* Gramsci was more "dialectic" than "deterministic": he tried to build a theory which recognised the autonomy, independence and importance of culture and ideology."
And in Antonio Gramsci's own words from there: ... form the terrain of the 'conjunctural' and it is upon this terrain that the forces of opposition organise. ... Critical self-consciousness means, historically and politically, the creation of an elite of intellectuals. A human mass does not 'distinguish' itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest sense, organising itself: and there is no organisation without intellectuals, that is without organisers and leaders... But the process of creating intellectuals is long and difficult, full of contradictions, advances and retreats, dispersal and regrouping, in which the loyalty of the masses is often sorely tried. ... So one could say that each one of us changes himself, modifies himself to the extent that he changes the complex relations of which he is the hub. In this sense the real philosopher is, and cannot be other than, the politician, the active man who modifies the environment, understanding by environment the ensemble of relations which each of us enters to take part in. ...."
"A crisis occurs, sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves (reached maturity) and that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them, within certain limits, and to overcome them. These incessant and persistent efforts
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
What about Github Famous..?
"While his software accomplishments may be looked down upon by some, it was his role as a free thinker and a spiritual leader of the open source movement that was his greatest accomplishment"
Well, the problem is he has spent a long time bragging about his software accomplishments, trying for decades to craft this image of himself as an effortless universal programming genius who understands it on a deep level, when his actual achievements don't merit that image in the slightest. Which wouldn't be so bad by itself if he wasn't just a nasty, arrogant, racist, misogynist, islamophobic guy as well who also tries to paint himself as this supermacho badass; some of his self-congratulatory writing is so over-the-top that it suggests a need for mental health professionals intervention.
Mr Raymond is a tricky bugger. I would not be surprised if this story was not purposefully released to create a data set based upon the responses, With each type of response being categorised to hacker archetype. Of course it wont be real fun until a full psych test is crafted to further analyse archetype responses.
Could be really useful for employment, keeping hackers best employed within the archetype to be more productive, less purposefully unproductive and to prevent burn out from having to continually try to hard. Then of course they are types no one might wish to employ outside of spy vs spy application.
It would be interesting to see how people reading this article would categorise themselves, a poll, I kind of like sharpshooter, prankster, architect myself (leaning towards architect and away from prankster).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Me? Um ... architect because it makes my life easier, sharpshooter if necessary, tinker since it's my job, algorithmicist as long as it's signal processing related.
Definitely not castellan or translator. The most complex UI I had to manage was "one button, one LED".
i have zero interest in anything ESR has to say.
the open source movement was built mostly by anonymous people who are too humble or modest to do the types of stuff that got ESR famous
BSD for example - which has very little to do with Torvalds, RMS, or ESR, is the foundation of iphone, mac, playstation, and alot of other stuff.
i have never seen the author of curl start a "manifesto" about how we need to stockpile ammo and destroy liberalism.
i never saw the author of ClipperJ post walltext of lunacy.
but that is what open source is built on. people like that. who build things.
that has almost nothing to do with RMS, ESR, or Linux, and is the foundation of an enormous amount of the modern internet
I would like to see this assessment done with the collection of data done by a Myers-Briggs or enneagram (with wing analysis) test. I think it would produce some interesting and more revealing results about strengths and vulnerabilities, this really being able to drill down on the conscious and subconscious drivers of rat "type" of hacker.
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao