Yea, I remember reading that article a week or two ago
and being equally annoyed at times. I like to consider
myself a competent programmer, but I'm obviously not a
"good hacker" because I think Perl
syntax is retarded and certainly not something I'd
actively choose to code in. And preferring to work with
Windows must make me deluded. I could make some crack
about the only way that "they" could
get people to want to work with UNIX was to rename it
and give it away, but that wouldn't be nice. Blah, it's
pretty obvious that the author has been drinking the
open-source/Slashdot Kool-Aid.
Parts were on spot though and overall it was interesting
provided one could ignore the religous fervor about
open-source and operating systems.
Well, basically there is nothing wrong with fixing
annoying you bug in Linux core API and rebuilding the
system, that's routine operation on Linux actually. I
don't work with Linux for several years, but before it
was this way - you could (and should) update core
sources whenever new rpm comes and rebuild for your
configuration and taste.
I recently read Hackers & Painters by Paul
Graham, the author of the article in question. I must
say that I found myself very annoyed at many points in
the book. I managed to make it thru however just on the
many interesting ideas that were also mixed in.
I still havn't figured out if I would recommend the book
to anyone. On one hand it's full of so much of the
"open-source/Slashdot Kool-Aid" that
Kenneth so aptly describes. On the other, it made me sit
and thing about things in some interesting ways.
I honestly think that the book could have been great if
he could just get over himself and realize that
thousands of "hackers" don't think
that open-source is the only way and that Lisp or some
variant of Lisp is the only language worth programming
in. Or maybe he just needs an good editor to show him
the way. Just changing some of the
"facts" that he presents as
"opinions" would have raised my
enjoyment enormously.