waider

Note: This is something I wrote most of a few months back, and eventually didn't post. I'm not sure why not; I think I felt it might offend some people, but fuck it, I can't see why it would, other than the coworker I mention who's not reading this.

I spent a lot of time wanting to be a hacker.

I stumbled across an old version of the Jargon File in 1991; it was one of ESR's early versions, but the last time I checked it was neither mentioned in the JFile history nor was it available for download as a historical artefact. I have a printout of it at home on fanfold paper, probably unreadable at this point as the ink fades and the paper yellows.

My discovery of the Jargon File coincided, more-or-less, with the discovery of the Internet; I had just gotten unrestricted access to the world of IP addresses, and was using Archie to trawl for things with the word "hack" in them, for reasons probably associated with a desire to break into the college computer system. I'd already grokked, if you will, the buzz associated with free software; the writing of some code, then giving it to others so they could appreciate your artistry. But we played on a VAX, and VAXen have a security model that is full of levels and privileges and just begs the intrepid explorer to try and elevate himself from peon to OPERATOR. Being uneducated in the "true meaning" of the word "hack", I saw it as the search term most likely to result in me finding the keys to the network around me. Instead, it was more of a key to a whole new mindset I found.

I devoured the Jargon File at a single sitting; printed it out, took it home, and soaked in it. Read the story of Mel, read the little anecdotes-disguised-as-definitions, and revelled in it. This is what I wanted to do! This is how I would make my mark on the world!

From the beginning, though, I was a bit different from the people I read about in the Jargon File. I had a life outside the computer. Sure, several cold mornings at 4am I was knee deep in some godawful piece of DCL that I'd constructed out of some self-imposed necessity; but several other cold mornings at 4am I was in the arms of my girlfriend either sleeping or, well, not. I worked with the college Entertainments crew setting up the stage for bands playing the college circuit, rather than working in the college IT department. I got a summer job working as a Floor Manager in an amusement arcade, walking around machines for eight hours a day making sure noone was trying to break machines and fixing the broken ones. I tried AD&D, but it simply didn't stick to me.

Still, though, I did build up my own little store of arcane geek knowledge, and write some code that was inscrutable but did the job required of it. I sat at a computer for 24 hours with a fever (real, not metaphorical) and turned out a building-block GUI system for a college project that two friends then appropriated for a never-finished game. I wrote the bulk of the code for my final-year project in two 25-hour sessions, and scored a B or B+ average for it. I wrote a 68000 assembler in BASIC before ever learning what parsing was. I hand-optimised a 3D graphics routine by learning how the floating-point coprocessor on Intel machines worked. I built a DOS-based token-ring network using serial cables and TSRs. I spent hours and hours staring at machine code traces and core dumps, oblivious to the passage of time as I dug through other peoples' work. And so on. Not meaning to dicksize, but you get the picture.

I only recently realised, though, that I'm glad I didn't make it all the way to being a hacker. A coworker was punning incessantly, again, while I was getting frustrated in my attempts to find a particular piece of hardware. And eventually I told him to just fuck off and leave me alone, because he wasn't helping my frame of mind. And it struck me; this is part of what I aspired to. I'm no slouch at wordplay, but heck, I know there are some puns that are just too strained, too dumb, or plain wrong and should just be stifled. And I have a modicum of understanding when it comes to appreciating the frame of mind of other people. I still spend far too much time dealing with computers, but I'm perfectly capable of stepping away from them. I'm happier to socialise with people than computers, or even computer-based people (i.e. people in chat systems). I'm aware of the irony in writing this on a computer, to post on a world-wide computer network, for other people with computers to read, but that's computer-as-tool, not computer-as-life. And while I'd admittedly love to be one of the fanboyed geek-famous, I'm happy that I'm at least not nodding pseudo-sagely at the bit in the Jargon File that says,

The sort of person who uses phrases like "incompletely socialized" usually thinks hackers are. Hackers regard such people with contempt when they notice them at all.