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Reading 07: The Cathedral and the Bazaar

  In The Cathedral and the Bazaar , Eric S. Raymond (ESR) explores two distinct software development models: the cathedral and the bazaar. ESR describes the cathedral as “carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time”. ESR saw this approach to development as better for more complex problems, such as the larger tools he had developed in the 90’s, and it encompasses much of what I have seen in my short tenure as a software developer in the real world. For every project I have worked on, there has been a project lead with (mostly) absolute power over its process and result. In my experience, the cathedral model has been effective at keeping teams on task, but it also keeps the project rigid in scope and prevents some great ideas from coming to fruition. I see less collaborations between teams with reasonably consistent results. ESR describes the bazaar model of software development as “a great b
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Reading 06: Wealth Creation

The three essays by Paul Graham that we read this week certainly had some interesting takes on startups and wealth. The way he describes startups appears incredibly frightening to someone who is considering all job prospects nearing graduation, like myself. While most of Graham's writings on startups focus on the people and innovations that make them successful, he does highlight how  "there is a large random factor in the success of any company" (How to Make Wealth, Graham). When talking about the downsides of startups, Graham describes their approach to business as similar to a mosquito. These companies risk shutdown to make as many jumps and leaps as possible to strive for more success, cutting corners and making rash decisions all over. This seems like common knowledge, but Graham drives home just how luck-based it can be. Viaweb evidently came close to failure several times, even with a risk-adverse approach to business. In today's world, however, Graham claims t
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Reading 04: Nerds and Hackers

 Despite a 20-year gap between Steve Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Paul Graham’s series of essays on hackers, their writings are remarkably similar. They use different language, different ideas, and different lived experiences to describes “hackers” in their time, yet both works clearly describe the same kind of person. In “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”, Graham describes his upbringing and how he felt as a “nerd” in school. He found that nerds usually shared the same story: They were intelligent, unpopular, and had a certain drive for knowledge. While most kids spent a lot of time trying to climb the social ladder, nerds typically cared more for learning and exploring. Nerds did not necessarily want to be unpopular, but their other interests were always more important. These characteristics are the exact story that Levy relays in Hackers for many of the kids at MIT and Stanford. These notorious early hackers all describe how they took apart electronics, dug in di
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Reading 03: Game Hackers

  Early hackers viewed programming as a point of pride, something to perfect and show friends like a trophy of your abilities. However, as computers finally became more accessible to everyday people outside of college campuses, a new marketplace was created for the world of software. A third generation named “Game Hackers” saw monetary value in computing and changed the focus of hacking from progress to profit. “Game Hackers” valued ability and rewarded it better than their predecessors ever could, but their idea of perfection was wildly different. “Game Hackers” preferred “less polished programs that shipped on schedule” (Hackers p. 334, Steve Levy) to a program that was the fastest or most resource-efficient. Marketing the product instead of perfecting it was the real focus, since that is what sold the most games. Ken Williams sums up this shift best in Steve Levy’s book, saying “"We'll lose our dependence on programmers. It's silly to think programmers are creative. I
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Reading 02: Hardware Hackers

An ethical debate between "True Hackers" and "Hardware Hackers" is not something I had in mind when I first heard each of the individual terms. Both groups were stereotypical nerds who abhorred sleep schedules, were "afraid of women", and simply loved all things tech. I did not think there could POSSIBLY be a divide between these two groups. After all, how much disagreement can there be over a 6-part ethical code dedicated to spreading awareness and practicality for computers? The answer may shock you. "True Hackers" wanted to keep their ideas locked behind a certain barrier to entry, namely how they judged your ability and character. While I can understand this, I think that "Hardware Hackers" had a much more reasonable approach to the Hacker Ethic: make computers more accessible by any means necessary. By spreading access to computers beyond college club rooms, more people could slip past the elitism of computing that had existed in i
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Reading 01: I Hack, Therefore I Am

  My first introduction to the idea of a "hacker" came from playing video games as a kid. I was terrible at most of the video games I tried, but this barrier was not going to stop me. When I eventually got access to the internet, I found my saviors in the form of video game "hackers". These mystical figures could find every bug, exploit, and cheat to let me bend the rules. As I grew older, this idea of "breaking the rules" is how I envisioned hackers. While the means and purpose always vary, hackers beat the system in ways not intended. However, I would not say that I took this idea too seriously. Pop culture painted hackers as stereotypes with few aspirations, which did not catch my interest as a kid. The video from the second lecture titled "Hackers - Technobabble" really summed up how I saw hacking as a whole. This reading from Steven Levy gave me an entirely new perspective on the idea of hacking. Levy describes "true hackers" as pe
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