From Slashdot This Morning

Andrew Dalke adalke at mindspring.com
Tue May 13 14:42:19 EDT 2003


Robin Munn
> Original URL for Paul Graham's article quoted above:
>
>     http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

One section says:
] The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how
different hacking is
] from the sciences. Scientists don't learn science by doing it, but by
doing labs and
] problem sets. Scientists start out doing work that's perfect, in the sense
that they're
] just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them.
Eventually,
] they get to the point where they can do original work. Whereas hackers,
from the start,
] are doing original work; it's just very bad. So hackers start original,
and get good, and
] scientists start good, and get original.

I take some issue with that assertion.  A lot of my early hacking was
neither
original nor good.  Some of my earliest programs were: a program for doing
gcd/lcm calculations, a lunar lander game, a prefix- postfix- infix-
converter,
and a BASIC implementation in BASIC.  All these were based on things I
saw elsewhere and wanted to learn to do.

And in the sciences, I remember in 8th or 9th grade, being a fan of
Heinlein, I wanted to calculate orbitals.  In retrospect, it turns out I was
solving the equations numerically, although my timesteps were entirely
too large.  That was original, because no one had taught me that technique
(little did I know I would do molecular dynamics years later, using the
same principles), but it wasn't anywhere near perfect.

I also don't understand why "doing labs and problem sets" isn't doing
science.
"Is there a relationship between the length of a pendulum and its period?"
Yes, the answer's known, but it's as much science as the various projects
I did as a kid were hacking.

Okay, getting off my soap box.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com






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