And, of course, Hacker News is a really bad name for a community of software entrepreneurs, for a number of reasons.
First, it encourages people who understand the correct meaning of the term to associate this place with the art of computer programming, leading them to submit articles about Haskell as though they belonged here. There are a lot more people who care about that sort of thing than people starting software businesses (startup or otherwise), so we get a bit lost in the noise.
The big one, though, is that "Hacker" doesn't mean what computer folk know it to mean. To anybody but us (meaning roughly 100% of people), it means "Criminal Who Breaks In To Your Computer". That's what we associate ourselves with by naming this site the way we do.
I'd much rather go back to being "Startup News". At least then our only concern would be convincing people to stop posting general tech news here.
Sometimes articles about programming languages do belong here. They have a large audience here and have since I've been around. This isn't "Startup News" and doesn't purport to be.
In fact, the guidelines for hacker news specifically state that "[On Topic]...includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
What makes you think stories about Haskell don't belong here, though? I mean, just look at the last stories submitted by pg (I've removed the YC/HN-specific links):
This is the driest year in California history
How Airbnb used predictive pricing to improve user experience
Wallpaper group
Source of the recent outagelet
Moths and sloths: Slow food movement
Migration of Monarch Butterflies Shrinks Again Under Inhospitable Conditions
From Erratic to Effective: The Story Behind the Zapier Blog in 2013
Boardinghouses: where the city was born
A Start-Up Moves Teachers Past Data Entry
Why Are Americans Staying Put?
Map: Income Taxes by US County
Silicon Valley 40 under 40: Garry Tan
JPMorgan applies for patent on bitcoin-like currency
Medieval kids’ doodles on birch bark
Rockstar: We celebrate the value and power of innovation
Nut consumption reduces risk of death
Economic history: What can we learn from the Depression?
Stars of Tech World Lend Their Force to George Lucas
Startups Like Berlin Because Visa Rules Are Nothing Like the U.S.
Commuting's Hidden Cost
Chemical 'clock' tracks ageing more precisely than ever before
Stephen King’s Family Business
Is an Haskell story really less relevant that all of these?
When I saw people saying stuff like "hacking a salad" I considered this term lost forever. Putting food together is not hacking a salad people, it's literally making one.
I concur: the term 'hacking' has become hopelessly diluted by wannabe use applied to unrelated activities that are only very weakly analogous.
A 'hack' is a self-deprecating description of a quick and dirty programming job, anybody who proudly self-describes something they've done as hacking has totally missed the point. It used to be that one could not self-style oneself as a hacker but rather became one when others who are recognised as such begin referring to one as such.
(I used to be referred to as being one, but I gave up my fascination with computer security and exotic computer science concepts in the mid 2000s.)
Hacking doesn't need to be self-deprecating. I'm proud of some of my work that I consider a hack.
When I worked in finance, I hacked together a bridge between an FIXML order pub/sub service and a proprietary exchange server. Was it my best work? Obviously not. Was it ugly as sin? Hell yes. Did I slap it out in a few weeks? Yup. Did it prop up the business for the 18 months it needed to develop a "real" solution? Yeah.
That ugly hack probably earned the business millions in revenue.
Though I also concur; the term hacker is overused, diluted and twisted in meaning, and I have no interest in bringing it back.
"Growth hacking" is another pointless phrase. The words "hacking" and "hacker" have become pretty useless, actually. They just mean way too many things to different people. One might just as well replace "hacker" with "person" and "hacking" with "doing".
1) I like to think of myself as a hacker, because as tnecniv says, in many ways it's really an attitude.
2) I don't self-describe as a hacker in public however, because as znpy says, it's a title that other people ought to give you first before you call yourself that.
3) I especially don't self-describe as a hacker when non-techies are around, because they'll just think I'm calling myself a cracker (not the effect you want ;-) )
Readit News
And, of course, Hacker News is a really bad name for a community of software entrepreneurs, for a number of reasons.
First, it encourages people who understand the correct meaning of the term to associate this place with the art of computer programming, leading them to submit articles about Haskell as though they belonged here. There are a lot more people who care about that sort of thing than people starting software businesses (startup or otherwise), so we get a bit lost in the noise.
The big one, though, is that "Hacker" doesn't mean what computer folk know it to mean. To anybody but us (meaning roughly 100% of people), it means "Criminal Who Breaks In To Your Computer". That's what we associate ourselves with by naming this site the way we do.
I'd much rather go back to being "Startup News". At least then our only concern would be convincing people to stop posting general tech news here.
In fact, the guidelines for hacker news specifically state that "[On Topic]...includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
:)
I very much prefer h4x0r though.
A 'hack' is a self-deprecating description of a quick and dirty programming job, anybody who proudly self-describes something they've done as hacking has totally missed the point. It used to be that one could not self-style oneself as a hacker but rather became one when others who are recognised as such begin referring to one as such.
(I used to be referred to as being one, but I gave up my fascination with computer security and exotic computer science concepts in the mid 2000s.)
When I worked in finance, I hacked together a bridge between an FIXML order pub/sub service and a proprietary exchange server. Was it my best work? Obviously not. Was it ugly as sin? Hell yes. Did I slap it out in a few weeks? Yup. Did it prop up the business for the 18 months it needed to develop a "real" solution? Yeah.
That ugly hack probably earned the business millions in revenue.
Though I also concur; the term hacker is overused, diluted and twisted in meaning, and I have no interest in bringing it back.
https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html
2) I don't self-describe as a hacker in public however, because as znpy says, it's a title that other people ought to give you first before you call yourself that.
3) I especially don't self-describe as a hacker when non-techies are around, because they'll just think I'm calling myself a cracker (not the effect you want ;-) )
The only exceptions are people that "created" the hacker culture: people like Stallman, Sussman, esr, etc.
Just my two cents.
It might be different for someone else.