:Hackers:
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984
ISBN 0-385-19195-2
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer revolution.
He never understood UNIX or the networks, though, and his enshrinement
of Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out (thankfully) to
have been quite misleading. Numerous minor factual errors also mar the
text; for example, Levy's claim that the original Jargon File derived
from the TMRC Dictionary (the File originated at Stanford and was
brought to MIT in 1976; the co-authors of the first edition had never
seen the dictionary in question). There are also numerous misspellings
in the book that inflame the passions of old-timers; as Dan Murphy, the
author of TECO, once said: "You would have thought he'd take the trouble
to spell the name of a winning editor right." Nevertheless, this
remains a useful and stimulating book that captures the feel of several
important hackish subcultures.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984
ISBN 0-385-19195-2
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer revolution.
He never understood UNIX or the networks, though, and his enshrinement
of Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out (thankfully) to
have been quite misleading. Numerous minor factual errors also mar the
text; for example, Levy's claim that the original Jargon File derived
from the TMRC Dictionary (the File originated at Stanford and was
brought to MIT in 1976; the co-authors of the first edition had never
seen the dictionary in question). There are also numerous misspellings
in the book that inflame the passions of old-timers; as Dan Murphy, the
author of TECO, once said: "You would have thought he'd take the trouble
to spell the name of a winning editor right." Nevertheless, this
remains a useful and stimulating book that captures the feel of several
important hackish subcultures.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
Related:
- TMRC /tmerk'/ n.
The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT,
one of the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959... - foo /foo/
1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very
common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely
anything,
esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First... - bug n.
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or
piece of hardware,
esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym... - vi: /V-I/, *not* /vi:/ and *never* /siks/ [from
`Visual Interface'] n.
A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for... - ken: /ken/ n. 1. [UNIX] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of
UNIX.
In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution... - metasyntactic variable n.
A name used in examples and
understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion,
or any random member of a class of things under... - ITS /I-T-S/ n.
1. Incompatible Time-sharing System,
an influential though highly idiosyncratic operating... - TECO /tee'koh/ n.,v. obs.
1. [originally an acronym for
`[paper] Tape Editor and COrrector';
later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor... - core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of
ferrite-core memory;
now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM...
