The New Hacker's Dictionary - Eric S. Raymond (e book reader online txt) 📗
- Author: Eric S. Raymond
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Node:Other Interests, Next:[15251]Physical Activity and Sports,
Previous:[15252]Reading Habits, Up:[15253]Appendix B
Other Interests
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the
culture: science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form
practiced by the Society for Creative Anachronism and similar
organizations), chess, go, backgammon, wargames, and intellectual
games of all kinds. (Role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons
used to be extremely popular among hackers but they lost a bit of
their luster as they moved into the mainstream and became heavily
commercialized. More recently, "Magic: The Gathering" has been widely
popular among hackers.) Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other interests that
seem to correlate less strongly but positively with hackerdom include
linguistics and theater teching.
Node:Physical Activity and Sports, Next:[15254]Education,
Previous:[15255]Other Interests, Up:[15256]Appendix B
Physical Activity and Sports
Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and
are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in
spectator sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one
does, not something one watches on TV.
Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball
was long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and
relatively friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for
similar reasons. Hacker sports are almost always primarily
self-competitive ones involving concentration, stamina, and micromotor
skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying, hiking,
rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling,
skiing, skating, skydiving, scuba diving. Hackers' delight in
techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty
complicated equipment that they can tinker with.
The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves special
mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection has grown
noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many hackers admired
martial arts disciplines from a distance, sensing a compatible ideal
in their exaltation of skill through rigorous self-discipline and
concentration. As martial arts became increasingly mainstreamed in the
U.S. and other western countries, hackers moved from admiring to doing
in large numbers. In 1997, for example, your humble editor recalls
sitting down with five strangers at the first Perl conference and
discovering that four of us were in active training in some sort of
martial art - and, what is more interesting, nobody at the table found
this particularly odd.
Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become established as the
hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture combining
skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let anybody join seems a
stronger parallel to hacker behavior than ever. Common usages in
hacker slang un-ironically analogize programming to kung fu (thus, one
hears talk of "code-fu" or in reference to specific skills like
"HTML-fu"). Albeit with slightly more irony, today's hackers readily
analogize assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot of a Jet
Li movie: the aspiring newbie studies with masters of the tradition,
develops his art through deep meditation, ventures forth to perform
heroic feats of hacking, and eventually becomes a master who trains
the next generation of newbies.
Node:Education, Next:[15257]Things Hackers Detest and Avoid,
Previous:[15258]Physical Activity and Sports, Up:[15259]Appendix B
Education
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or
self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often
considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may
be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas
from which people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the
obvious computer science and electrical engineering) physics,
mathematics, linguistics, and philosophy.
Node:Things Hackers Detest and Avoid, Next:[15260]Food,
Previous:[15261]Education, Up:[15262]Appendix B
Things Hackers Detest and Avoid
IBM mainframes. All the works of Microsoft. Smurfs, Ewoks, and other
forms of offensive cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy
listening music. Television (with occasional exceptions for cartoons,
movies, and good SF like "Star Trek" classic or Babylon 5). Business
suits. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom. COBOL. BASIC.
Character-based menu interfaces.
Node:Food, Next:[15263]Politics, Previous:[15264]Things Hackers Detest
and Avoid, Up:[15265]Appendix B
Food
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most esp. Szechuan, Hunan,
and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely d�class�). Hackers
prefer the exotic; for example, the Japanese-food fans among them will
eat with gusto such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish) and
whale. Thai food has experienced flurries of popularity. Where
available, high-quality Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. A
visible minority of Southwestern and Pacific Coast hackers prefers
Mexican.
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big.
Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of
hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly
health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they
eat. This may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the
stereotype was more on the mark before the early 1980s.
Node:Politics, Next:[15266]Gender and Ethnicity, Previous:[15267]Food,
Up:[15268]Appendix B
Politics
Vaguely liberal-moderate, except for the strong libertarian contingent
which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe
generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian;
thus, both conventional conservatism and `hard' leftism are rare.
Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be
aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic
political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day.
Node:Gender and Ethnicity, Next:[15269]Religion,
Previous:[15270]Politics, Up:[15271]Appendix B
Gender and Ethnicity
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of
women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for
technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and
dealt with as equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong
minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish
contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence
(see [15272]Food, above, and note that several common jargon terms are
obviously mutated Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a
function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education.
Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met
with freezing contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and
color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels,
and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many
hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to
develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive
-- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to
future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens,
mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
Node:Religion, Next:[15273]Ceremonial Chemicals,
Previous:[15274]Gender and Ethnicity, Up:[15275]Appendix B
Religion
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly,
three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional
faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.
Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be
relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all
forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody'
religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.
Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism
or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native'
religions.
There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility
that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with
neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage
to `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much
psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.
Node:Ceremonial Chemicals, Next:[15276]Communication Style,
Previous:[15277]Religion, Up:[15278]Appendix B
Ceremonial Chemicals
Most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in moderation if at
all. However, there has been something of a trend towards exotic beers
since about 1995, especially among younger Linux hackers apparently
influenced by Linus Torvalds's fondness for Guiness.
Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD,
psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is
still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use
of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be
particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make
them stupid. But [15279]on the gripping hand, many hackers regularly
wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.
Node:Communication Style, Next:[15280]Geographical Distribution,
Previous:[15281]Ceremonial Chemicals, Up:[15282]Appendix B
Communication Style
See the discussions of speech and writing styles near the beginning of
this File. Though hackers often have poor person-to-person
communication skills, they are as a rule quite sensitive to nuances of
language and very precise in their use of it. They are often better at
writing than at speaking.
Node:Geographical Distribution, Next:[15283]Sexual Habits,
Previous:[15284]Communication Style, Up:[15285]Appendix B
Geographical Distribution
In the United States, hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area-to-Boston axis;
about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of
Cambridge (Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California), although there are
significant contingents in Los Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, and
around Washington DC. Hackers tend to cluster around large cities,
especially `university towns' such as the Raleigh-Durham area in North
Carolina or Princeton, New Jersey (this may simply reflect the fact
that many are students or ex-students living near their alma maters).
Node:Sexual Habits, Next:[15286]Personality Characteristics,
Previous:[15287]Geographical Distribution, Up:[15288]Appendix B
Sexual Habits
Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle
variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a relatively large
gay and bisexual contingent. Hackers are somewhat more likely to live
in polygynous or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage, or
live in communes or group houses. In this, as in general appearance,
hackerdom semi-consciously maintains `counterculture' values.
Node:Personality Characteristics, Next:[15289]Weaknesses of the Hacker
Personality, Previous:[15290]Sexual Habits, Up:[15291]Appendix B
Personality Characteristics
The most obvious common `personality' characteristics of hackers are
high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with intellectual
abstractions. Also, most hackers are `neophiles', stimulated by and
appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). Most are
also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.
Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not
the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more
important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large
amounts of `meaningless' detail, trusting to later experience to give
it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical
intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a
creative genius who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by
people who routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals
into their brains. [During the production of the first book version of
this document, for example, I learned most of the rather complex
typesetting language TeX over about four working days, mainly by
inhaling Knuth's 477-page manual. My editor's flabbergasted reaction
to this genuinely surprised me, because years of associating with
hackers have conditioned me to consider such performances routine and
to be expected. --ESR]
Contrary to stereotype, hackers are not usually intellectually narrow;
they tend to be interested in any subject that can provide mental
stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even
interestingly on any number of obscure subjects -- if you can get them
to talk at all, as opposed to, say, going back to their hacking.
It is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders' expectations) that
the better a hacker is at hacking, the more likely he or she is to
have outside interests at which he or she is more than merely
competent.
Hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do with the
usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. In the same
way that children delight in making model trains go forward and back
by moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like
computers do nifty stuff for them. But it has to be their nifty stuff.
They don't like tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy, boring,
ill-defined little tasks that go with maintaining a normal existence.
Accordingly, they tend to be careful and orderly in their intellectual
lives and chaotic elsewhere. Their code will be beautiful, even if
their desks are buried in 3 feet of crap.
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional
rewards such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted by
challenges and excited by interesting toys, and to judge the interest
of
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