[pleasecalllater]

Three things:

1. I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not.

2. How come that someone thinks of himself/herself that he/she has the right to say who is a "true hacker" and who is not.

3. AND THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX5Xy3a2uJU Thank you Jayson.

[username90]

> I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not.

Going fast is revered, breaking things is not. And why is going fast so important? It is because an individual can't accomplish much when going slow. Why are individual works important? Because individuals do things that would never get funding, they make decisions that would never pass a committee and they can pivot the entire direction of a project many times in a single hour without any issues. Therefore many problems can only be solved by hackers as large teams are too restricted to do them.

[atoav]

It is entirely possible to do something slow and well and still do it alone and esentially without funding. As a film maker this is one of the things I love about writing and programming: there is no money needed only your time (which of course also costs you something). But it is perfectly possible to sit alone in your chamber and write a great piece of software that competes with the best out there. Try doing that in Film. This would be really a field where you wouldn’t get far without people and money.

Whether you hack it together quickly or meditate on it for ages doesn’t has much to do with it, I’ve seen both. Maybe the person with the quick hack just tries to solve a problem while the slow person likes the intellectual challenge of solving it in a “good” way.

[username90]

Quick hacks can often compete with the best out there precisely for the reasons I mentioned, git is a good example. Then of course when something becomes big it stops being a quick hack and starts having a huge maintenance team, but it was still a quick hack in the beginning.

[Avamander]

> It is entirely possible to do something slow and well and still do it alone and essentially without funding.

Like?

[atoav]

Horizon EDA was started by a guy who didn’t want to use a closed source EDA tool like Altium for his final university electronics project and wasn’t happy with KiCAD.

He planned it very carefully (so I wouldn’t call it a hack) and years after it is still going without any funding. This isn’t that uncommon in open source IMO.

Of course this is not a value judgement, there are quick hacks that work perfectly well and slower more planned out projects that never work at all — each aproach has it’s pros and cons.

[z3phyr]

> "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things"

Your premise is wrong. Hacking is making things do stuff which was thought to be not possible before (like making an 8 color machine produce 16 color output by wizardry), making a computer meant for static business applications play highly interactive real time games etc (2) creating "art" from computation, peered by your equally skilled friends to get street cred and respect and your co-hackers will one-up you by creating even more beautiful art.

The second point makes the definition very subjective though. But I hope you got the jist.

[lsofzz]

> 1. I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not.

The way I see it, `going fast and breaking things' is an iterative process. IMHO, it should not be viewed as `go fast, break things and _never_ iterate to fix things'.

Just thought I'd toss my two cents on it.

> 2. How come that someone thinks of himself/herself that he/she has the right to say who is a hacker and who is not.

No idea why you feel binary. If you like to call yourself a hacker - fuck it - go for it.

The connotation in the beginning were that hackers were pioneers, thinkers, achievers and great motivators. Over time, the meaning has been mutated and engineered by the media to mean `malicious' and `conniving' thieves/criminals.

To this day, I still stick to the original definition of a `hacker'. I don't give a two fuck about what the media likes to call it.

[dijit]

There was a term from the early 00's for malicious "hackers", which was crackers.

Yes, it doesn't have the same ring to it so I understand why the media didn't latch on to it.

But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word? "Hack" was never a good term to begin with, originating from the model railroad club at MIT.

[lsofzz]

> There was a term from the early 00's for malicious "hackers", which was crackers.

Yes.

> But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word?

Not sure how that will pan out :-)

[TeMPOraL]

> But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word? "Hack" was never a good term to begin with, originating from the model railroad club at MIT.

Well, one of my colleagues and I aspire to become techno-mages.

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjToVZTqCbw

[Pete_D]

"In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...

[krapp]

>1. I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not.

The former represents the philosophy of startup culture. "Move fast and break things" is a Facebook motto. You're on a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC company, so connect the dots.

[eeZah7Ux]

> why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified

This is not hacking in the proper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto ) sense.

[watwut]

If that is proper definition of hacker, I dont want to have anything to do with that nor understand why would anyone see it as a good thing. Thankfully, there are many other competing definitions around that do not require one share the exact same feelings as this dude.

Just because someone believes he is all there is to hacking and that his personal feelings and gripes should define the word, does not mean we have to buy it.

[eeZah7Ux]

Many of the "competing" definitions have been made up decades after the manifest e.g. the ominous "growth hacker".

Or the one in "hacker news", for that matter.

[al_form2000]

> "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified

The two sides of your equation do not equate at all.