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Stallman/Torvalds Story, definition of 'Hacker'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the covering-the-rise dept.

/dev/random writes "I found this quaint little story by David Warsh about GNU, Linux, Opensource, and "hacker"s in the Globe today. I suppose it can pay off to read the business section. "

1 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Emacs text editor and compiler? by Jamie+Zawinski · · Score: 4
    I wouldn't count the lisp psuedocompiler as a "real" compiler, either.

    Then you have some funny definition of the word "compiler" that the rest of the world doesn't share. You seem to think that compilers targetted at virtual machines are not "real" compilers, but that compiler targetted at hardware machines are.

    Ok, so I've got gcc, and it's emitting x86 code. Now I execute that code in an x86 emulator. Is gcc suddenly not a "real" compiler?

    Now turn it around: I've got a compiler targetted at a virtual machine (the Emacs byte-code engine, the Java VM, whatever.) You say it's not a "real" compiler. Now someone builds a chip that executes that instruction set directly. Now suddenly, magically, it's a "real" compiler again?

    Shades of Schrodinger's Cat! You can't know whether it is or isn't a compiler until you open the box?