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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.