Reading 03: Artistic Hackery
In broad strokes (pun intended), Paul Graham’s visions of hackers as akin to painters shares much in common with Stephen Levy’s own description of hackers. Graham’s comparisons of hackers to painters resonated with me the last time I read this article last semester in ethics and I still find that I agree with much of what he has to say on the subject. Additionally, I draw plenty of comparisons between what Paul Graham is describing in this essay to Stephen Levy’s picture of hackers from Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
A major feature of Levy’s version of a hacker, especially in the “True Hackers” version of the book, was that hackers weren’t so concerned with the rules on how to do things. The hackers at MIT weren’t trying to make sure they abided by the system by going to all of their classes and making sure they got perfect grades in their courses. They were far more interested in just making cool things. They weren’t following a rigid research methodology or experimenting using any kind of formal process. They were just fiddling with things and trying to see what worked in order to create something they were interested in.
In a very similar vein, Paul Graham talks about how hackers should not feel as though they need to follow the specific rules of how to program or obey a certain process. He talks about how in college he was taught to fully develop a program on paper before ever writing a line of code. Professors told him to fully flesh things out on paper and then write this flawlessly formulated program all at once into the computer. But that wasn’t how Graham liked to program. That’s not how he believes hackers program. Instead, Graham describes that he “tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape”.
Both Graham and the hackers described by Levy aren’t really concerned about the shape or form of the process. They just want to experiment and fiddle with a program in order to ultimately create something pretty awesome. I feel this as well. Often times when I program I just dive in right away. The only planning I do before touching the keyboard is just figuring out some place to start. I’m not too picky about that either. It’s just kind of a thought of what’s something I can do right away. After that, just lots of spewing “hopelessly broken” code mixed with “beating it into shape”. I love this chaotic coding process. An antimethodology if you will.
Graham continues discussing his belief to not trust the process with some great imagery. He mentions how programming languages should be “a pencil, not a pen” implying that we shouldn’t be scared to erase and amend. Programming and hacking is an iterative process. Furthermore, Graham says “We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler”. He’s still making the same point about programming by experimenting while using art metaphors, but I had to include this passage because it is so well-crafted and also echoes the sentiment of Levy’s hackers quite well. I tend to scribble, smudge, and smear quite often in programming, and I’m glad to hear other hackers do too.
In another passage, Graham describes another key aspect of hacking shared by Levy’s descriptions (and painters too!). Graham discusses how “you learn to hack mostly by hacking”. You have to learn by doing with hacking, just like painting. You can’t learn how to paint just by reading about famous painters or watching someone paint on Youtube (other video hosting sites are available). You have to actually paint to learn how to paint. It’s imperative that you’re hands-on with hacking and painting.
This sentiment of course reflects Stephen Levy’s words about hackers as a prong of the Hacker Ethic is the “hands-on imperative”. The hackers in Levy’s book all understood that you have to actually hack and practice in order to get better at hacking. This is why the hackers at MIT did everything they could to get as much access to the mainframe computers as possible. By doing, you tend to learn quite a bit.
Although they do have plenty of important similarities, I tend to prefer Graham’s description of a hacker, especially with his essay “Hackers and Painters”, over Stephen Levy’s from his book. Levy focuses far too much on how hacking has to essentially consume your life in order to be a true hacker. In his characterizations, hacking isn’t so much a passion as it is a lifestyle. I tend to shy away from this idea.
However, Graham’s focus is that hackers are makers. Hackers are creators. Hackers are just individuals who enjoy to hack and be creative and make cool stuff. This is a much better and much more appealing idea of a hacker. I like to hack and program because I like to just mess around and try to make things I think are cool. I like the creative side of programming. Those are my motivations and that’s why I really like Graham’s essay on the subject.
