OT: 'conduct unbecoming of a hacker'

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 15:31:02 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> People are not looking for a general purpose language. They are 
> looking for a solution to their particular problem area...
>
> Go
> Rust
> Swift
>
> All fairly specialized and gaining ground.

I wouldn't call Swift specialized, maybe only because it only 
runs on OS X, iOS and linux right now.  So Linus would predict 
that Go and Rust may do well now because they're specialized, but 
will be hit hard if their niche collapses and they don't become 
more general-purpose before then (which I don't think they can 
do).  You seem to think that's not a real concern, that the 
growth from specialization is worth it.  Let's see who's right. :)

On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 15:34:47 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:
> On 02/11/2016 06:53 AM, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>>
>> I know some will disagree with me, but I will say it anyway: IT
>> community, especially developers, are known for poor social 
>> skills...
>> People tend to forget that...
>
> There may be a certain *small* level of truth to that, but most 
> of it is nothing more than decades of Hollywood's pejorative 
> stereotyping. And people being naive enough to believe what 
> they see in the fiction that was produced by people who have 
> spent decades proving themselves to have zero comprehension of 
> basic reality, let alone even a basic high-school level 
> research ability.

That's how Hollywood works: they take a well-known trait or 
stereotype and build a caricature out of it, ie jocks are 
good-looking and dumb, the President is wise and composed, and so 
on.

> It's the standard old Hollywood complete and total disconnect 
> with reality - hell, look how they portray Tourette's a having 
> a relationship to swearing (which is just plain bizarre to 
> anyone actually capable of spending a mere one minute on a 
> basic web search), or how cracking security always involves 
> playing a 3D puzzle game. And then there's the oddity that any 
> time a writer or director uses a computer in real life, the 
> machine is clearly built to detect it's being used by Hollywood 
> personnel, so all login systems automatically switch from the 
> normal "Username and Password don't match \ Incorrect login \ 
> Password was incorrect" to a flashing red "ACCESS DENIED". 
> Because presumably they actually see this flashing red "ACCESS 
> DENIED" when they actually do use a computer in real life, 
> because they couldn't really be THAT dumb when producing a 
> film, right? At least that's the only explanation I can come up 
> with for its appearance in otherwise "realistic" movies, at 
> least aside from LSD...which really could explain all the rest 
> of their delusions too...hmm...

A lot of that is about showing simply and visually, or with 
greater effect, what would be boring if shown realistically.  
Many watching will not be able to read "Incorrect login," but 
they can figure out that flashing red is bad.  If that person 
with Tourette's were just twitching uncontrollably, it's not very 
entertaining, whereas it's funny if they unexpectedly swear like 
a sailor in front of some prude. :) Watching somebody cracking 
security or defusing a bomb realistically would be boring and 
confusing, if not for the 3D puzzles or flashing LED bomb clocks 
to watch and understand what's going on.

They're not that stupid, you know.  They're just trying to make 
as much money as they can, which means dumbing the material down 
for the lowest common denominator.

In fact, I find it astonishing how often they raise issues that 
later become big in real life.

> Hollywood mental flakes spend decades inventing and reinforcing 
> their own myopic stereotypes, such as "technical ability == 
> dorks with no social skills", most likely because they feel 
> threatened by people with at least half a function brain (which 
> most of them clearly lack), and then the masses believe it, and 
> it becomes *cough* "fact". That's all there is to it.

There may be some truth to that, but more likely they're just 
pandering to the stereotypes of their audience, ie the salesman 
who snickers at the IT guy who can't get a date but is jealous 
that he makes more money.

I did think the recent movies The Social Network and Jobs, both 
written by the writer of The West Wing and The Newsroom, showed a 
concerted effort to cast those tech CEOs in a negative light.  
Hollywood is likely mad that tech is encroaching on their domain, 
with youtube, iTunes, Netflix, etc.  There were supposedly 
characters in The Newsroom who railed against bloggers (never 
watched the show, heard it was bad), and the writer has done the 
same in real life.

What you say may be true in the last couple years, whereas before 
they likely didn't see tech as a threat.