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<html>
<head>
<title>On Hacking</title>
</head>
<body>
<a name="On_Hacking"></a>
<a href="http://www.regexps.com">The Hackerlab at <code>regexps.com</code></a>
<h2 align=center>On Hacking</h2>
<small>
<b>up: </b><a href="arch.html#arch">arch</a></br>
</small>
<br>
<pre>
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
</pre>
<pre>
-- T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
</pre>
<p>Shall I spell out the perfect architecture for our software? Predict
the form of what we'll build? Construct a fictional schedule and a
list of milestones? Prepare a glossy presentation outlining all the
planned features? Magically forecast the size of markets and our
share? Foretell our winning marketing strategy? Calculate ROI over a
three year period to an impossible precision?
</p><p>Or shall we speak of truth?
</p><pre>
Hacking
</pre>
<pre>
In nightclubs, living rooms,
computer labs at midnight,
</pre>
<pre>
Over meals and after shows,
when sprinklers come on at 3AM
</pre>
<pre>
Fresh, strung out;
sober, tripping
</pre>
<pre>
We have talked and talked,
experimented,
lived,
as beautiful ideas
took hold of our bodies
and led them
here
</pre>
<pre>
``Yes -- it will work like this.''
</pre>
<pre>
``And like that too.''
</pre>
<pre>
And we should build it this way:
without pain
without a master plan
by feel
and feedback
informed by knowledge
and joy
and life
</pre>
<pre>
After all:
_That_
is how
the ancestors
worked
</pre>
<p>And off we went. Into academia. Into the industry. Each with hopes
of making real our portion of the good ideas. Has it worked so far?
</p><p>Intellegence, perspective, and initiative have become de-valued
qualities in programmers; thoughtlessness and rapidity at filling out
mediocre code templates have aquired a high market value. Even
"new" approaches to computing, for example Linux, are aimed more at
reimplementing what has already been done than at informed innovation
and exploration.
</p><p>Many of the best hackers find that there is neither commercial nor
academic support for autonomy and sustained work on long term
projects. When conditions arise that enable someone to carefully
design an elegant tool or a beautiful piece of computing art, those
conditions are typically unstable and the result of a very rare
accident.
</p><p>Cynicism and resignation have become our survival skills.
</p><p>We think this industry stinks.
</p><pre>
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz
</pre>
<pre>
-- A. Ginsburg, Howl
</pre>
<p>Let's fix things, shall we?
</p>
<small><i>arch: The arch Revision Control System
</i></small><br>
<a href="http://www.regexps.com">The Hackerlab at <code>regexps.com</code></a>
</body>
|
