Books: The New Hacker\'s Dictionary version 4.2.2
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Various editors >> The New Hacker\'s Dictionary version 4.2.2
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Casual, vaguely post-hippie; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes,
Birkenstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards, and moustaches are
common. High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous
`slogan' T-shirts (only rarely computer related; that would be too
obvious).
A substantial minority prefers `outdoorsy' clothing -- hiking boots
("in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room",
as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or chamois shirts,
and the like.
Very few actually fit the "National Lampoon" Nerd stereotype, though
it lingers on at MIT and may have been more common before 1975. At
least since the late Seventies backpacks have been more common than
briefcases, and the hacker `look' has been more whole-earth than
whole-polyester.
Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles
rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately, take this to
extremes and neglect personal hygiene). They have a very low tolerance
of suits and other `business' attire; in fact, it is not uncommon for
hackers to quit a job rather than conform to a dress code.
Female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use none at
all.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:Reading Habits, Next:[15247]Other Interests,
Previous:[15248]Dress, Up:[15249]Appendix B
Reading Habits
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction.
The typical hacker household might subscribe to "Analog", "Scientific
American", "Whole-Earth Review", and "Smithsonian" (most hackers
ignore "Wired" and other self-consciously `cyberpunk' magazines,
considering them [15250]wannabee fodder). Hackers often have a reading
range that astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to talk about
it as much. Many hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as
the average American burns up watching TV, and often keep shelves and
shelves of well-thumbed books in their homes.
_________________________________________________________________
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 déclassé). 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 work or other activities in terms of the challenges offered and the
toys they get to play with.
In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems,
hackerdom appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP
types; that is, introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed
to the extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the
mainstream culture). ENT[JP] types are also concentrated among hackers
but are in a minority.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality, Next:[15292]Miscellaneous,
Previous:[15293]Personality Characteristics, Up:[15294]Appendix B
Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality
Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with
other people. This may be because hackers generally aren't much like
`other people'. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards
self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people
and tasks perceived to be wasting their time.
As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational,
`cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often
contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be
especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.
Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the
[15295]Right Thing, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant and
bigoted on technical issues, in marked contrast to their general
spirit of camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints
otherwise. Old-time [15296]ITS partisans look down on the ever-growing
hordes of [15297]Unix hackers; Unix aficionados despise [15298]VMS and
[15299]MS-DOS; and hackers who are used to conventional command-line
user interfaces loudly loathe mouse-and-menu based systems such as the
Macintosh. Hackers who don't indulge in [15300]Usenet consider it a
huge waste of time and [15301]bandwidth; fans of old adventure games
such as [15302]ADVENT and [15303]Zork consider [15304]MUDs to be
glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere or interesting puzzles;
hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to Usenet or MUDs
consider [15305]IRC to be a real waste of time; IRCies think MUDs
might be okay if there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way.
And, of course, there are the perennial [15306]holy wars --
[15307]EMACS vs. [15308]vi, [15309]big-endian vs.
[15310]little-endian, RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc. As in society at
large, the intensity and duration of these debates is usually
inversely proportional to the number of objective, factual arguments
available to buttress any position.
As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty
maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the
classic [15311]computer geek: withdrawn, relationally incompetent,
sexually frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his
or her craft. Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than
mainstream folklore paints it -- but almost all hackers will recognize
something of themselves in the unflattering paragraphs above.
Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing
with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles
up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance
tasks get deferred indefinitely.
1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other
things) a combination of short attention span with an ability to
`hyperfocus' imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another
syndrome that is said to overlap with many hacker traits entered
popular awareness: Asperger's syndrome (AS). This disorder is also
sometimes called `high-function autism', though researchers are
divided on whether AS is in fact a mild form of autism or a distinct
syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to severe
deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues and in modeling
or empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS patients exhibit
mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits with high
intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently seek out technical
fields where problem-solving abilities are at a premium and people
skills are relatively unimportant. Both syndromes are thought to
relate to abnormalities in neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the
brain's processing of serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency
to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality,
especially those variations that make life more complicated for
authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue
tend to be among those questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist;
and if so whether they are really `diseases' rather than extremes of a
normal genetic variation like having freckles or being able to taste
DPT. In either case, they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these
syndromes are over-diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in
authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers
or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists - thus, any
social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to
helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such `abnormal' people
until they are properly docile and stupid and `well-socialized'.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about
clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most
would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators
for ADD and AS - the status of caffeeine as a hacker beverage of
choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural
receptors as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is
probably true that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of
clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5%
(AS is rarer and there are not yet good estimates of incidence as of
2000).
_________________________________________________________________
Node:Miscellaneous, Previous:[15312]Weaknesses of the Hacker
Personality, Up:[15313]Appendix B
Miscellaneous
Hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is widely
grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive incredibly
decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy
Porsches and RX-7s and then forget to have them washed. Almost all
hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit
of block-printing everything like junior draftsmen.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:Appendix C, Next:[15314]Bibliography, Previous:[15315]Appendix B,
Up:[15316]Top
Helping Hacker Culture Grow
If you enjoyed the Jargon File, please help the culture that created
it grow and flourish. Here are several ways you can help:
o If you are a writer or journalist, don't say or write [15317]hacker
when you mean [15318]cracker. If you work with writers or journalists,
educate them on this issue and push them to do the right thing. If you
catch a newspaper or magazine abusing the work `hacker', write them
and straighten them out (this appendix includes a model letter).
o If you're a techie or computer hobbyist, get involved with one of
the free Unixes. Toss out that lame Microsoft OS, or confine it to one
disk partition and put Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD on the other one.
And the next time your friend or boss is thinking about some
proprietary software `solution' that costs more than it's worth, be
ready to blow the competition away with open-source software running
over a Unix.
o Contribute to organizations like the Free Software Foundation that
promote the production of high-quality free and open-source software.
You can reach the Free Software Foundation at gnu@gnu.org, by phone at
+1-617-542-5942, or by snail-mail at 59 Temple Place, Suite 330,
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.
o Support the League for Programming Freedom, which opposes over-broad
software patents that constantly threaten to blow up in hackers'
faces, preventing them from developing innovative software for
tomorrow's needs. You can reach the League for Programming Freedom at
lpf@uunet.uu.net. by phone at +1 617 621 7084, or by snail-mail at 1
Kendall Square #143, P.O.Box 9171, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA.
o Join the continuing fight against Internet censorship, visit the
Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at
[15319]http://www.cdt.org.
o If you do nothing else, please help fight government attempts to
seize political control of Internet content and restrict strong
cryptography. The so-called `Communications Decency Act' was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but U.S. cryptography policy
still infringes our First Amendment rights. Surf to the Center for
Democracy and technology's home page at [15320]http://www.cdt.org to
see what you can do to help fight censorship of the net.
Here's the text of a letter RMS wrote to the Wall Street Journal to
complain about their policy of using "hacker" only in a pejorative
sense. We hear that most major newspapers have the same policy. If
you'd like to help change this situation, send your favorite newspaper
the same letter - or, better yet, write your own letter.
Dear Editor:
This letter is not meant for publication, although you can publish
it if you wish. It is meant specifically for you, the editor, not
the public.
I am a hacker. That is to say, I enjoy playing with computers --
working with, learning about, and writing clever computer programs.
I am not a cracker; I don't make a practice of breaking computer
security.
There's nothing shameful about the hacking I do. But when I tell
people I am a hacker, people think I'm admitting something naughty
-- because newspapers such as yours misuse the word "hacker",
giving the impression that it means "security breaker" and nothing
else. You are giving hackers a bad name.
The saddest thing is that this problem is perpetuated deliberately.
Your reporters know the difference between "hacker" and "security
breaker". They know how to make the distinction, but you don't let
them! You insist on using "hacker" pejoratively. When reporters try
to use another word, you change it. When reporters try to explain
the other meanings, you cut it.
Of course, you have a reason. You say that readers have become used
to your insulting usage of "hacker", so that you cannot change it
now. Well, you can't undo past mistakes today; but that is no
excuse to repeat them tomorrow.
If I were what you call a "hacker", at this point I would threaten
to crack your computer and crash it. But I am a hacker, not a
cracker. I don't do that kind of thing! I have enough computers to
play with at home and at work; I don't need yours. Besides, it's
not my way to respond to insults with violence. My response is this
letter.
You owe hackers an apology; but more than that, you owe us ordinary
respect.
Sincerely, etc.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:Bibliography, Previous:[15321]Appendix C, Up:[15322]Top
Bibliography
Here are some other books you can read to help you understand the
hacker mindset.
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden BraidGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal
Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books, 1979
ISBN 0-394-74502-7
This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker
preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations
on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen are woven into a
brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded self-reference.
The perfect left-brain companion to "Illuminatus".
Illuminatus!
I. "The Eye in the Pyramid"
II. "The Golden Apple"
III. "Leviathan".
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Dell, 1988
ISBN 0-440-53981-1
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist
rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins,
the fall of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll,
and the Cosmic Giggle Factor. First published in three volumes, but
there is now a one-volume trade paperback, carried by most chain
bookstores under SF. The perfect right-brain companion to Hofstadter's
"Gödel, Escher, Bach". See [15323]Eris, [15324]Discordianism,
[15325]random numbers, [15326]Church of the SubGenius.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Pocket Books, 1981
ISBN 0-671-46149-4
This `Monty Python in Space' spoof of SF genre traditions has been
popular among hackers ever since the original British radio show. Read
it if only to learn about Vogons (see [15327]bogon) and the
significance of the number 42 (see [15328]random numbers) -- and why
the winningest chess program of 1990 was called `Deep Thought'.
The Tao of Programming
James Geoffrey
Infobooks, 1987
ISBN 0-931137-07-1
This gentle, funny spoof of the "Tao Te Ching" contains much that is
illuminating about the hacker way of thought. "When you have learned
to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you
to leave."
Hackers
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984
ISBN 0-385-19195-2
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer
revolution. He never understood Unix or the networks, though, and his
enshrinement of Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out
(thankfully) to have been quite misleading. Despite being a bit dated
and containing some minor errors (many fixed in the paperback
edition), this remains a useful and stimulating book that captures the
feel of several important hacker subcultures.
The Computer Contradictionary
Stan Kelly-Bootle
MIT Press, 1995
ISBN 0-262-61112-0
This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in format to
the Jargon File (and quotes several entries from TNHD-2) but somewhat
different in tone and intent. It is more satirical and less
anthropological, and is largely a product of the author's literate and
quirky imagination. For example, it defines `computer science' as "a
study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of
the former and the success of the latter" and `implementation' as "The
fruitless struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises
made by the rich and ignorant"; `flowchart' becomes "to obfuscate a
problem with esoteric cartoons". Revised and expanded from "The
Devil's DP Dictionary", McGraw-Hill 1981, ISBN 0-07-034022-6; that
work had some stylistic influence on TNHD-1.
The Devouring Fungus: Tales from the Computer Age
Karla Jennings
Norton, 1990
ISBN 0-393-30732-8
The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a great deal
of computer- and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a few
well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for the human aspects of the
lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of
hackerdom. Unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses
suggest that she didn't have the final manuscript checked over by a
native speaker; the glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing,
and at least one classic tale (the Magic Switch story, retold here
under [15329]A Story About Magic in Appendix A is given in incomplete
and badly mangled form. Nevertheless, this book is a win overall and
can be enjoyed by hacker and non-hacker alike.
The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder
Little, Brown, 1981
(paperback: Avon, 1982
ISBN 0-380-59931-7)
This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of
the design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It is an
amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset -- although largely
the hardware hacker -- done by a complete outsider. It is a bit thin
in spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to
the serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what
day-to-day life can be like -- the fun, the excitement, the disasters.
During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the
nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the
company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of
resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no
unit of time shorter than a season."
Life with UNIX: a Guide for Everyone
Don Libes and Sandy Ressler
Prentice-Hall, 1989
ISBN 0-13-536657-7
The authors of this book set out to tell you all the things about Unix
that tutorials and technical books won't. The result is gossipy,
funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. Along
the way they expose you to enough of Unix's history, folklore and
humor to qualify as a first-class source for these things. Because so
much of today's hackerdom is involved with Unix, this in turn
illuminates many of its in-jokes and preoccupations.
True Names ... and Other Dangers
Vernor Vinge
Baen Books, 1987
ISBN 0-671-65363-6
Hacker demigod Richard Stallman used to say that the title story of
this book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". Until the subject of
the next entry came out, it was hard to even nominate another
contender. The other stories in this collection are also fine work by
an author who has since won multiple Hugos and is one of today's very
best practitioners of hard SF.
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Bantam, 1992
ISBN 0-553-56261-4
Stephenson's epic, comic cyberpunk novel is deeply knowing about the
hacker psychology and its foibles in a way no other author of fiction
has ever even approached. His imagination, his grasp of the relevant
technical details, and his ability to communicate the excitement of
hacking and its results are astonishing, delightful, and (so far)
unsurpassed.
Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier
Katie Hafner & John Markoff
Simon & Schuster 1991
ISBN 0-671-68322-5
This book gathers narratives about the careers of three notorious
crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of hackerdom's
dark side. The principals are Kevin Mitnick, "Pengo" and "Hagbard" of
the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert T. Morris (see [15330]RTM, sense
2) . Markoff and Hafner focus as much on their psychologies and
motivations as on the details of their exploits, but don't slight the
latter. The result is a balanced and fascinating account, particularly
useful when read immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's [15331]The
Cuckoo's Egg. It is especially instructive to compare RTM, a true
hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak Mitnick and the
alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos Club notorious. The
gulf between [15332]wizard and [15333]wannabee has seldom been made
more obvious.
Technobabble
John Barry
MIT Press 1991
ISBN 0-262-02333-4
Barry's book takes a critical and humorous look at the `technobabble'
of acronyms, neologisms, hyperbole, and metaphor spawned by the
computer industry. Though he discusses some of the same mechanisms of
jargon formation that occur in hackish, most of what he chronicles is
actually suit-speak -- the obfuscatory language of press releases,
marketroids, and Silicon Valley CEOs rather than the playful jargon of
hackers (most of whom wouldn't be caught dead uttering the kind of
pompous, passive-voiced word salad he deplores).
The Cuckoo's Egg
Clifford Stoll
Doubleday 1989
ISBN 0-385-24946-2
Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Markus Hess and the
Chaos Club cracking ring nicely illustrates the difference between
`hacker' and `cracker'. Stoll's portrait of himself, his lady Martha,
and his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a marvelously
vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live
and how they think.
#===================== THE JARGON FILE ENDS HERE ====================#
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