Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watcgl.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Newsgroups: net.college Subject: Re: Where have all the hackers gone? Message-ID: <798@watcgl.UUCP> Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 10:42:59 EST Article-I.D.: watcgl.798 Posted: Mon Dec 17 10:42:59 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 18-Dec-84 02:20:35 EST References: <3138@utah-cs.UUCP> <145@sask.UUCP> Reply-To: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 23 In article <145@sask.UUCP> konkin@sask.UUCP (Doug Konkin ) writes: > >There are >still lots of hackers around, even if access to the guts of department >computers is becoming more restricted. I think that if the author of >the posting checked carefully, he would find that the people that he >calls hackers are disappearing not so much because they are being >bested by the aforementioned mercenaries, but rather because they can't >hack the theory necessary to be a computer scientist. Technical schools >turn out programmers -- we university types are supposedly capable of >much more. When I was an undergrad, many of the "hackers" I knew were certainly capable of handling theory. Several were scholarship students, some obtained pure mathematics (not the easier computer science) degrees, some have masters' degrees now. These people have written a Lisp interpreter, an operating system (Coherent), an Ada compiler, helped build DECtalk, and other less-well-known projects. They are certainly more capable than most of the people walking around with "computer science" degrees. I am worried about the future of hacking because I am worried that people of this quality no longer seem to have an environment available where they can work on their own projects, at least at Waterloo.