Comments on: On Hackers and Painters and Education and Bonding and Risk and Nanny Languages http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/ a blog about information Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:37:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: JP http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/comment-page-1/#comment-1834 JP Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:34:27 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/#comment-1834 Bobby, the problem you allude to is more to do with the multiple meanings of the word "hacker" than anything else. See the article on Hacker definition controversy in wikipedia if that helps. In fact you may want to take a look at all the definitions, with various shades of meaning, in quite different contexts. You can find that definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker Bobby, the problem you allude to is more to do with the multiple meanings of the word “hacker” than anything else.

See the article on Hacker definition controversy in wikipedia if that helps. In fact you may want to take a look at all the definitions, with various shades of meaning, in quite different contexts.

You can find that definition here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker

]]> By: schmoozer http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/comment-page-1/#comment-1833 schmoozer Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:52:49 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/#comment-1833 JP, is hacking a crime?? Hackers dont think so... a group of Moroccan hackers that hack into sites as part of the resistance in the war with Israel. We attack Israeli sites every day. This is our duty…hacking is not a crime.” Added another group member: “We want Israel to stop fighting. Stop killing children and we’ll stop hacking.” According to the spokesman, the group’s members are all Moroccan youths, under the age of 20. JP,

is hacking a crime?? Hackers dont think so…
a group of Moroccan hackers that hack into sites as part of the resistance in the war with Israel. We attack Israeli sites every day. This is our duty…hacking is not a crime.”

Added another group member: “We want Israel to stop fighting. Stop killing children and we’ll stop hacking.” According to the spokesman, the group’s members are all Moroccan youths, under the age of 20.

]]> By: Andrew Yeomans http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/comment-page-1/#comment-1818 Andrew Yeomans Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:32:49 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/#comment-1818 Nanny Languages - ouch! Don't miss the very important distinction between creative design and engineering. Restrictions in programming languages will likely negativelty affect designers, but when it comes to creating a fully-engineered robust program, having a controlled standard way of construction with tested materials has a lot of benefits. My poor analogy would be that a (building) architect can validly use materials such as cardboard or even lego to help visualise a design. But the builders would not use those materials, but use standard bricks and steel when constructing the real building. Unfortunately when it comes to software, the commonly used langages C and C++ don't prevent the *unnecessary* risks of vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows. Instead of stopping avoidable errors while allowing you to explicitly say when you know what you are doing. And I think Paul Graham is wrong when saying "The more of a language you can write in itself, the better", at least when looking at the broader picture. It might be true for procedural languages running on von Neumann architectures, and is another way of saying that a programming language should be equivalent to a Universal Turing Machine. But I suspect that itself is a "nanny" constraint on what is possible with other language designs oriented to parallel or asynchronous processing, pattern matching, etc. Nanny Languages – ouch! Don’t miss the very important distinction between creative design and engineering. Restrictions in programming languages will likely negativelty affect designers, but when it comes to creating a fully-engineered robust program, having a controlled standard way of construction with tested materials has a lot of benefits.

My poor analogy would be that a (building) architect can validly use materials such as cardboard or even lego to help visualise a design. But the builders would not use those materials, but use standard bricks and steel when constructing the real building.

Unfortunately when it comes to software, the commonly used langages C and C++ don’t prevent the *unnecessary* risks of vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows. Instead of stopping avoidable errors while allowing you to explicitly say when you know what you are doing.

And I think Paul Graham is wrong when saying “The more of a language you can write in itself, the better”, at least when looking at the broader picture. It might be true for procedural languages running on von Neumann architectures, and is another way of saying that a programming language should be equivalent to a Universal Turing Machine. But I suspect that itself is a “nanny” constraint on what is possible with other language designs oriented to parallel or asynchronous processing, pattern matching, etc.

]]> By: JP http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/comment-page-1/#comment-1814 JP Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:41:36 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/#comment-1814 James, you're right. I did enjoy the pushback :-) I like listening to people who have opinions, reading what they have to say. And learning from it. That doesn't mean I have to agree with everything someone says. Opinion is vulnerable. By definition. Blogs are provisional. By definition. But I prefer opinion to destructive criticism and slamming and flaming and rants. Idlewords spent time on explaining his/her position. That's opinion. And there isn't enough of it around. James, you’re right. I did enjoy the pushback :-)
I like listening to people who have opinions, reading what they have to say. And learning from it. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything someone says.

Opinion is vulnerable. By definition. Blogs are provisional. By definition.

But I prefer opinion to destructive criticism and slamming and flaming and rants. Idlewords spent time on explaining his/her position. That’s opinion. And there isn’t enough of it around.

]]> By: James Governor http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/comment-page-1/#comment-1802 James Governor Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:58:09 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/06/27/on-hackers-and-painters-and-education-and-bonding-and-risk-and-nanny-languages/#comment-1802 yes but... you might also enjoy this pushback... :-) http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm yes but… you might also enjoy this pushback… :-)

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

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