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by jmduke 5067 days ago
Why do we need a label to describe someone who builds a self-balancing unicycle?

Labels like 'hacker' do nothing to further anything, and generally aren't impressive to anyone who doesn't assign the label to themselves. Build cool shit and that's impressive.
1 comments
philh 5066 days ago
I used to want to be a hacker. What I want to be hasn't changed much, but now there's no word for it. It's demotivating. I don't know how demotivating. Maybe I would never have become a hacker₁₉₉₀ even if the word hadn't changed, maybe I still will.

It's not just me: I want other people to strive for a thing that no longer has a name.

I don't feel like I'm adequately articulating myself here. Perhaps it shouldn't matter that we're missing a word. But I feel like it does anyway.

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jmduke 5066 days ago
Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want sort of a universal standard for technical excellence. Similar to (topical!) Olympic athletes; participating in the Olympics is pretty much an affirmation that you're one of the best athletes alive, no matter the sport.
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philh 5066 days ago
Well, not just technical excellence. I want to celebrate and encourage "the hacker spirit", which embodies playfulness as well. It takes a certain mind to look at Brainfuck and ask "do we really need all those instructions?" [1], even if it's not particularly hard, once you've asked the question, to see that you don't. (Mind you, I never looked for ways to minimise them myself, so it might be a harder problem than I'm giving credit for.)

I don't feel like the Olympics demonstrate the hacker spirit, although it's likely that some of the athletes have it.

[1] http://esolangs.org/wiki/BF_instruction_minimalization

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