On Hacking Charities

Saw an interview (video here) today that struck a chord with me. This is an interview by Space Rogue, the correspondent at Hacker News Network of Johnny Long of Hackers for Charity at the Hacker Conference SchmooCon in Washington DC. Once again, I am amazed at the effect that one person (or a small group of people) can have to affect the lives of those less-fortunate than them.

Much like the Khan Academy, these guys are trying to make a difference. Every time I see this, I want so badly to find a cause and have the freedom to devote my energies to it. It is an incredible inspiration, in contrast to all the bad press that the hacker community gets of late, to see people not giving in to the stereotype cast by the few.

That attitude is a difficult one to maintain in the face of such negativity but it is truly a testament to the mettle of these men and others like them that they persevere.

Venture into software development

As a part of a project I am working on for my job, I needed to develop a methodology for easily estimating injection molded cycle times for plastic parts. I wrote the code to do it in Visual FoxPro 9. Once I was done, I had several ideas for improving it and was in the mood to test drive Visual C# 2010. I did so and have decided to release the result as open source. I have uploaded the software to SourceForge, here. Feel free to browse, download and play. Let me know if you like it and what you find. For me, it was an interesting project that actually had a real-world use. That is one of my biggest problems. I don't have any issues with tackling big (or in this case small) problems as they come up. I have a hard time defining original, relevant problems to tackle. That's one of the skills that I would like to acquire.

Eric Raymond defined the thrust of the hacker mentality in his excellent paper on How to be a Hacker. I can identify with much of the paper (not all of it, but most). What I have a hard time with is the "usefulness" of the projects. I don't want to do another tic-tac-toe game or an RSS feed generator. I want to do something that actually has a need to be done because the problem needs a solution. I DO understand the need for a learning curve, but I've always been one to just jump into the deep end of the pool and learn by breaking. ESPECIALLY when it comes to computers (just ask my Mom what happened with her first computer that had a CD-ROM - I was fixing what I did for a solid week). I've learned more from breaking and then trying to fix things than I ever have out of books and classes. That being said, finding a challenge that grabs my fancy is more-than-occasionally difficult.

Need to find a better method of doing that...

Programming

As part of my "self-development", I have been working on teaching myself a series of new programming languages. The first of these I decided on was Python. In roughly 2 weeks, I have become about as comfortable with programming in Python as I am programming in C++ which has been my "workhorse" language for over 10 years now. It's just so dang easy to get things done in Python, much more so than in C++. I am starting to come around to a new way of thinking that I have seen in the "hacker" community (not the break-the-law "cracker" types, but the true see-a-need-fill-a-need "hackers"). Programming languages are like a toolbox. If your toolbox only contains a hammer or only a screwdriver, you will be able to tackle only specific types of projects well and others you will struggle with to varying degrees. If you learn several varying languages, however (in essence, filling your toolbox with multiple different types of tools), you can tackle a vast majority of projects with relatively the same amount of ease.

I have 5 languages on my list of known/to-learn programming languages. C++ for those instances where a program absolutely needs to run at top speed (graphics and bigtime math programs), Python (I'm thinking is going to be my general purpose (swiss army knife) language, Perl because so many web items (like CGI scripts) are already written in it (I may not code in Perl, but it wouldn't hurt to be able to read it), C# for it's platform-independance because of the Common Language Runtime (and I already know some so that elevates it above Java for me), and finally Lisp because it's been recommended as an advanced programming language that will change the way a programmer thinks about programming (and busting out of the box is almost NEVER a bad thing).

The other thing I found interesting last night as I was awake tooling around on the internet from 1am to 5am were the "sacred cow" arguments between the Perl Hackers and the Python Hackers. There was a lot of arguing about which language was "better" and a lot of them seemed to me like wisps of cloud dispersing in the wind - that is, with a lot of personal opinion and not much substance. I'd seen this phenomenon in other areas like my ASL wargame hobby, but I guess did not really think to see it in a "professional" setting. I began to wonder how many other, similar environments I would find "like" discussions in. Then I went to bed, thinking I'd probably never dredge up the energy or curiosity to find out...

Because we can....

OK, I have a new "hero". His name is Ben Heckendorn. Ben makes laptops. Not just any laptops, though. Ben makes laptops out of consoles and rare electronics like (Atari and his latest, the Commodore 64). Why, you may ask? Because he can. Because it's a challenge. Because when you're going to that illegal arms meeting to pay for stolen AK-47's it's fun to see the look on the buyers face when he pulls out his Pellican briefcase and opens it up to find, no, not $100,000 in cold hard cash, but a portable X-Box 360 (obviously right before the arms dealer shoots him for wasting his time).

http://hackaday.com/?s=ben+heck+laptop

Someday, I want to know enough about electronics to do a Hack like this. Why? Because I can.