[daeken]

Having spent my years climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction, I think your analysis is way off the mark. This is a great way to learn how ELF works (and binaries in general), learn how machine code is formed, etc. Is it an actually 'useful' task, that produces a useful end product? Yes: knowledge. Knowledge that isn't easy to acquire.

You won't ever do this in the Real World (TM), but it's a fantastic way to get into things.

[ObnoxiousJul]

I studied physics, and I learnt actual programming and assembly language: I actually did this in the real world!

What do you learn in Computer Science then?!

Gibbering useless concepts that makes you non-sensical experts in the field of not delivering your software neither in time, nor in the frame of the specification? Or just

[milkshakes]

in the unlikely case that your question is sincere, this article on wikipedia touches lightly upon some of daeken's "real world" contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cody_Brocious

[adamnemecek]

Why exactly does this article make you so enraged?

[nullymcnull]

Indeed. He's telling us much more about himself than he is anything relevant to the article.

If you see nothing but a huge waste of time in this post, you're probably on the wrong site. HN in its prime would have really pissed you off, no doubt...