Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site tove.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!tove!mark From: mark@tove.UUCP (Mark Weiser) Newsgroups: net.cse Subject: Re: Where have all the hackers gone? Message-ID: <67@tove.UUCP> Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 23:26:11 EST Article-I.D.: tove.67 Posted: Tue Dec 11 23:26:11 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 02:25:00 EST References: <3137@utah-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: mark@tove.UUCP (Mark Weiser) Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD Lines: 23 With regard to Eric Brown's lament, and query regarding backwater Universities which still allow undergraduates to hack rather than homogenizing them all with "weed-out" courses: Here at Maryland I have observed two kinds of hackers: The first kind is the A student who also loves computers. This is by far the more common kind of hacker, and this person is not weeded out at all. (Yes, we have those weed-out courses here. They are necessary). We try to identify the A student hacker early on and get them into our research lab where they can play usefully. The second kind of hacker differs from the first only in lack of discipline, not in smarts, but the effect is that they barely make it through their courses, if it all. They do get weeded out often, but we also try to get these people into our lab if they are super enough. But these people SHOULD be weeded out: self discipline is a necessary skill in all of life. -- Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland Phone: (301) 454-7817 CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742