Reading01: My First Hack

When asked during the first lecture what my greatest 'hack' was, I realized that I either a) have a bad memory or b) have never created anything for fun. When reading about twelve-year-olds writing compilers and building ping-pong robots, I realized that it might be too late for me to do anything original in my life. If every reading puts these thoughts in my head, this is going to be a fun class.

"There were enough obstacles to learning already--why bother with stupid things like brown-nosing teachers and striving for grades?"

The first part of Hackers makes it very clear exactly what a 'hack' is. If there has been one common theme across these seven chapters, it has been the loss of self that hacking requires. Three distinct qualities are needed to be a "True Hacker:"

• Motivation to create something new
• Willingness to give your full self to your hack
• Selflessness, knowing your hack is not privately owned but instead an open-source contribution to the field

After a few hours of reading, I definitely have a different perception of this term. The word always carried this connotation that hacking required bypassing something--you needed to outsmart the guy on the other end. Through an understanding of 'hack' as a noun, the adjective carries a different weight. Hacking is really just building cool s**t. Why? Because you want to. That's pretty dope.

I find it crazy how quickly these guys were able to develop what they did. It seems like only a few guys went from punch cards to electronic music to interactive animation in a matter of months. Yes, Levy talks about how they spent every second of every day working on their hacks, but it's still impressive what they were able to build at that age. Switches don't make sense for Spacewar? Ok, let's just BUILD A JOYSTICK. It isn't even just on the software side. These guys were smart. They really knew electronics from top to bottom. They never lost motivation to keep building day after day, night after night.

I am not and will never be a True Hacker.

"The hackers had a word to describe those graduate students, it was the same word they used to describe almost anyone who pretended to know something about computers and could not back it up with hacker-level expertise. The word was "loser." The hackers were "winners." It was a binary distinction."

My complete and honest thoughts on Samson, Greenblatt, Nelson, and the others is that they're kinda just a**holes. One thing I noticed (and maybe I'm projecting) is how difficult it is to enter this community. The Hacker Ethic is great and all and I'm sure some think it calls for an open and diverse environment, but they judge hacking a little too seriously.

I love software development. I completely resonated with Levy's analysis of hacking being 'addictive.' When I was building my portfolio over the summer, there were multiple nights where I didn't even realize it was 4am and I'd been working for eight or nine hours straight...the time just flew by, and I didn't mind one bit. The thing is, though, is that I can't crank out a website in an hour. If there was only one computer at Notre Dame and I was getting pressured to log off since I wasn't 'good' enough to use it, I don't think that would encourage me to get better. I doubt I'd ever sign up to use the machine again.

I value watching and talking football on weekends. I value being in an a cappella group and rehearsing a few times a week. I value sitting in my living room debating movies and playing Euchre with my roommates on a Tuesday night. Sometimes I feel dumb since I don't spend my free time in Fitz working on personal projects and spending time in robotics clubs. Maybe I'm wrong, but many other communities seem to accept you as long as you're interested in the material. Hackers want you in or out--if you can't contribute to the field, you'd might as well never touch a machine again.

"As a general rule, even the most privileged of acolytes were not allowed direct access to the machine itself, and they would not be able to see for hours, sometimes for days, the results of the machine's ingestion of their "batch" of cards."

I fully understand that hacking was a lot different before the release of personal computers. I respect that these guys wanted to spend as much time with these machines as they could since Cambridge is the only place where they'd get the chance. I'm sure that most of my opinions are rooted in jealousy for not picking up SWE concepts as quickly as some of my peers and I'm scared of being exposed for not having built anything 'impressive' on my own. What I need to realize is that these first hackers didn't build Rome in a day. It takes everyone time to learn, and the only way to learn is to try.

I might never be a True Hacker, nor do I really want to be. But I can just be a hacker. Maybe one day I'll create my on Spaceland and have all of my friends trying to beat each others' high scores. When that motivation comes, I'll let you know.