35 years in the computer business yikes! You must be old enough to remember when programmers used soldering irons and code writers were bottom feeders that supplied the raw material for programmers to burn for the circuits they had designed.
Then when the 70's showed up and these jumped up key pounders started using the term programmers to describe themselves without having a clue how to design a circuit or operate a burner.Needless to say the (real) programmers were choked up.
It wasn't long before premade tools such as assembly editors and debuggers started showing up allowing any idiot with a book of opcodes to write or change code, of course these code changers quickly became known as hackers by the then (real) programmers because they chose a byte wasting but time saving hack instead of the more elegant rewrite, to improve prewritten code.
Well this WAS the 70's and it was very hip to claim and use an offensive epithet for self description, 'Freaks' of course being the hippest. Unfortunately for us the hackers not only chose to keep the name they also kept their programming habits, this was the birth of the dreaded bloatware. The Wedge for Commodore's PET BASIC comes to mind as a fine example of ugly hacking.
The 80's granted credence to high level languages as computers got bigger and faster and any fool that could put together a few lines of BASIC not only called themselves programmers but were selling these awful creations for real money! Sadly this crop of wannabees were now too far behind their heroes to see the difference between elegance and a hack job even when confronted with source code and so the asm programmers got lumped in with the asm hackers, much to their chagrin, as once more the worm turns. I don't think we've seen an elegant piece of code since then. We all know that bloatware sells hardware and bloatware is quickest and cheapest to produce so it's obvious where the encouragement is going.
Surprise, along with the 90's comes another use of our favourite epithet along with another crop of wannabees and a new group of outraged victims. Now we have a new spelling to add to the growing pile of victims as the '5kRyPt KyDdI3' seem to prefer 'h4X0rZ' which doesn't change the pronunciation but will either annoy or be ignored by the press.
I cannot think of any occasion where a slur or epithet, adopted or not, is seen as anything other than offensive by the general public My personal favourite example of language growth was the decision of the Englands Judiciary to adopt an acronym to protect the sensitivities of gentlefolk from hearing such shocking phrases as 'fornication under carnal knowledge' being uttered in courtrooms.
This Limey luckily escaped England before ever hearing anyone describe themselves as a Brit, an appellation I would never respond to.
A truly offensive term used to descibe the indigenous population of the Americas is Indian, here in Canada they are First Nations people. Indians come from India. Another offensive racist term that is in common use is lesbian, I only know a few people from the island of Lesbos, capital L Lesbians and whilst the men find the term amusing the women have a real problem with it.
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35 years in the computer business yikes!
You must be old enough to remember when programmers used soldering irons and code writers were bottom feeders that supplied the raw material for programmers to burn for the circuits they had designed.
Then when the 70's showed up and these jumped up key pounders started using the term programmers to describe themselves without having a clue how to design a circuit or operate a burner.Needless to say the (real) programmers were choked up.
It wasn't long before premade tools such as assembly editors and debuggers started showing up allowing any idiot with a book of opcodes to write or change code, of course these code changers quickly became known as hackers by the then (real) programmers because they chose a byte wasting but time saving hack instead of the more elegant rewrite, to improve prewritten code.
Well this WAS the 70's and it was very hip to claim and use an offensive epithet for self description, 'Freaks' of course being the hippest. Unfortunately for us the hackers not only chose to keep the name they also kept their programming habits, this was the birth of the dreaded bloatware. The Wedge for Commodore's PET BASIC comes to mind as a fine example of ugly hacking.
The 80's granted credence to high level languages as computers got bigger and faster and any fool that could put together a few lines of BASIC not only called themselves programmers but were selling these awful creations for real money! Sadly this crop of wannabees were now too far behind their heroes to see the difference between elegance and a hack job even when confronted with source code and so the asm programmers got lumped in with the asm hackers, much to their chagrin, as once more the worm turns. I don't think we've seen an elegant piece of code since then. We all know that bloatware sells hardware and bloatware is quickest and cheapest to produce so it's obvious where the encouragement is going.
Surprise, along with the 90's comes another use of our favourite epithet along with another crop of wannabees and a new group of outraged victims. Now we have a new spelling to add to the growing pile of victims as the '5kRyPt KyDdI3' seem to prefer 'h4X0rZ' which doesn't change the pronunciation but will either annoy or be ignored by the press.
I cannot think of any occasion where a slur or epithet, adopted or not, is seen as anything other than offensive by the general public
My personal favourite example of language growth was the decision of the Englands Judiciary to adopt an acronym to protect the sensitivities of gentlefolk from hearing such shocking phrases as 'fornication under carnal knowledge' being uttered in courtrooms.
This Limey luckily escaped England before ever hearing anyone describe themselves as a Brit, an appellation I would never respond to.
A truly offensive term used to descibe the indigenous population of the Americas is Indian, here in Canada they are First Nations people. Indians come from India. Another offensive racist term that is in common use is lesbian, I only know a few people from the island of Lesbos, capital L Lesbians and whilst the men find the term amusing the women have a real problem with it.