Re: What sort of Apple user are you?

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Sat, 30 Apr 2011, mmphosis wrote:

> Hacker.
>
> "The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break
> them."
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is
I suspect that's a bad definition.

Hackers are explorers.  They learn by experience, rather than learn in 
order to experience.  So when computers came along, those that got access 
tried all kinds of things, and learned from it.  Even that initial wave of 
breaking into mainframe computers (before there were home computers) at 
least had some of that element of learning by trying.

I don't think I really grasped that until I read Steven Levy's "Hackers" 
for the second time.  I realized I fit because when I'd been spending so 
much time programming, I wsa trying little bits and learning from it, to 
make larger things, rather than read books and figure things out on paper.
I remember when I got my OSI Superboard, which had BASIC in ROM, I got a 
book about learning BASIC.  But I didn't read it from the front to back, 
or read it and try the examples simultaneously.  I glanced over and then 
found myself skipping to specific points, because I needed answers to 
questions I had, rather than letting someone else (the book) lead.  I'd 
already learned to program in  6502 assembly by this method (though I 
hadn't really given it any thought until years later).

I was spending a lot of time with someone who was five years old about 
that time I reread "Hackers".  And she showed me that small children learn 
by experience, they don't have the language skills to be told things in 
advance, so they will stick their fingers in the AC socket on the wall to 
learn about it (well hopefully that one gets caught before they actually 
do), they'll put things in their mouths likely to learn something about 
the thing, they'll figure out how to talk without anyone really telling 
them how (yes, they have to hear words in order to speak them, but nobody 
is showing them how to move their tongues etc).

It's only later that people are taught as a prelude to experience, once 
they are in school.  That makes the learning abstract, among other things.

Someone mentioned LOGO.  The reality is that Seymour Papert created it as 
a learning environment, not a programming language.  It was meant for the 
child to say "what happens if I do this..." and try it, so much safer than 
if they try things in the real world (since mixing those chemicals may 
have a bad reaction).  When he created LOGO, he was basing it not just on 
work done studying how young children learn, but also based on the hackers 
he knew at MIT.

Then when LOGO got out of the lab, too often it was treated as a simple 
programming language, where the teacher sat at the front of the classroom
and taught the children what to do.

And that's what school does, it makes people dependent on others to tell 
them where to go, rather than to be explorers who map out the world.  When 
I first had internet access back in 1996, I wsa good at helping others, 
because I'd be exploring and would try things to see what happened, while 
others needed someone to do that exploring for them.

And then "hacking" becomes so misused you get kids using templates to 
break into computers, never learning anything and not developing skills.

   Michael