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from the there-are-still-some-of-us-left dept.
Over at ACM Yegor Bugayenko writes:
In the 1970s, when Microsoft and Apple were founded, programming was an art only a limited group of dedicated enthusiasts actually knew how to perform properly. CPUs were rather slow, personal computers had a very limited amount of memory, and monitors were lo-res. To create something decent, a programmer had to fight against actual hardware limitations.
In order to win in this war, programmers had to be both trained and talented in computer science, a science that was at that time mostly about algorithms and data structures.
[...] Most programmers were calling themselves "hackers," even though in the early 1980s this word, according to Steven Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, "had acquired a specific and negative connotation." Since the 1990s, this label has become "a shibboleth that identifies one as a member of the tribe," as linguist Geoff Nunberg pointed out.
[...] it would appear that the skills required of professional and successful programmers are drastically different from the ones needed back in the 1990s. The profession now requires less mathematics and algorithms and instead emphasizes more skills under the umbrella term "sociotech." Susan Long illustrates in her book Socioanalytic Methods: Discovering the Hidden in Organizations and Social Systems that the term "sociotechnical systems" was coined by Eric Trist et al. in the World War II era based on their work with English coal miners at the Tavistock Institute in London. The term now seems more suitable to the new skills and techniques modern programmers need.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:21PM (1 child)
Gee, that makes perfect sense considering the technology is completely different. System boards are ridiculously complete and affordable. Then there's Arduino and RaspberryPi. And if you want a full blown SoC you can get one.
The programming languages are different, the libraries available now were unimaginable back then, and the tools ... oh the tools we have now.
Last, but not least, is the choice in CPUs. Not only are there so many new and advanced choices, but we have more that 20 years of legacy chips to choose from.
So yes, the skills needed today are different.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:09PM
You are absolutely right - but you also miss part of what being a 'hacker' means, at least to me. The MIT hackers were also the people who computerised a model train track, making (or 'acquiring') all the necessary mechanical parts as well as writing the programs that controlled them. They would find an existing piece of hardware and then re-purpose it, either in part or completely, to enable it to be used in an entirely different way. Those who make things using the RasPi, Arduino, or any other SoC as the base controller are very much following in the footsteps of those who first called themselves 'hackers'.
I don't consider myself in their league, but I do the same today as a hobby. I'm currently working (my wife calls it 'playing') with RasPis, Arduinos and micropython (on lopy4's). I've made a Arduino controller which allows a disabled person to control a telephone, television and music streamer by simple push buttons - many disabled people cannot use a smart phone, they simply have insufficient motor control to carry out many of the functions that a 'smart' screen expects. I receive ADSB data from aircraft using a SDR and RasPi, and display it locally on my computer and stream it to 2 other websites. I'm developing a remote ADSB system which will do the same but which can be controlled by me from the comfort of my armchair using LoRa transmissions to a site several kilometers from where I am. I regularly strip down unwanted computers, printers and other hardware to scavenge parts that I can use in future projects. Writing the code is only part of what I consider to be a 'hacker'.