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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: 2) by KiloByte on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:09PM (3 children)
There's no real relation to age, I'd say. Back in the days, non-hackers wore business clothing while coding in Cobol. Today, they sip frappucinos while copy-pasting Javascript from StackOverflow. But someone still needs to code an OS to so they can run that node.js monstrosity in, and a container to limit damage when inevitably it gets breached.
I see people both twice my age and half my age cooperating on the same project, both with valuable contributions. Anyone can have the hacker mindset.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @05:18AM (2 children)
Head on over to https://hackaday.com/ [hackaday.com] or https://news.ycombinator.com [ycombinator.com]
You will find some hackers there. Round these parts we argue about stupid things like politics.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:54AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 29 2018, @12:11PM
There's more to argue about on politics. That doesn't mean we prefer doing so though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.