Yeah, hackerspaces are an obvious place to look for wizard power, but something about them feels off. Like, they’re trying to be amateur spaces rather than practicing full professional-grade work.
And no, I do not want underlings, whether wizard underlings or otherwise! That’s exactly what the point isn’t.
You aren’t looking for professional. That takes systems and time, and frankly, king power. Hackers/Makers are about doing despite not going that route, with a philosophy of learning from failure. Now you may be interested in subjects that are more rare in the community, but your interests will inspire others.
I’m a software engineer by trade. I kind of think of myself as an artificer: taking a boring bit of silicone and enchanting it with special abilities. I always tell people the best way to become a wizard like me is to make shitty software. Make something you know, something small, and that sounds like fun. It’ll be terrible and barely functional, but it’ll be yours, and the next one will be a little less shitty. Keep at that, until you can start thinking at higher levels of abstraction. eventually, your work will be less and less shitty, and before you know it it’ll be good.
Hackers/Makers encourage amateur work, because that’s where most people are, because they’re just starting out. Make no mistake, there are professionals in the community, but no one expects you to be up to their standards. Instead, they’ll help you make things a little less shitty.
Taking software engineering as an example: there are lots of hobbyists out there who have done tons of small programming projects for years, and write absolutely trash code and aren’t getting any better, because they’re not trying to learn to produce professional-quality code (or good UI, or performant code). Someone who’s done one summer internship with an actual software dev team will produce much higher quality software. Someone who’s worked a little on a quality open-source project will also produce much higher quality software.
In practice, that seems-to-me to generalize to most areas of engineering and craftsmanship. Plenty of hobbyists go screw around with things, and they just want to screw around with things; they don’t care about polishing their outputs, so they never develop half the skills a professional is forced to develop. And often, it’s not that much more time or effort or money to develop the extra skills! It’s a matter of making the right kind of effort, moreso than a matter of time or investment.
There are hobbyists who’s programming ability is lower than that of the average professional programmer. There are however also people who have historically called themselves hackers who’s skill at programming exceeds that of the average professional programmer. One example that was remerable to me was the guy who was giving a talk at the Chaos Computer Congress about how we was on vacation in Taiwan and because he had nothing better to do he cracked their electronic payment system that the Taiwanese considered secure before he went on his vacation.
At a good Hackerspace you do have a culture that cares about craftmanship and polishing skills.
Oh man, of people I’ve interviewed, the college graduates are next to useless. There are exceptions, but that’s true of those that have less traditional backgrounds too. There are way more talentless hacks than skilled professionals. Even at the graduate level.
If they’re there because of a paycheck, you can keep them. I want the people on my team that do it because they love it, and they have since they were a kid. They’re the ones that keep up, and improve the fastest—I am certainly biased.
With the new generative AI assistants, we’re going to have way more who are new and dabbling. Hopefully more of them are inspired to go deeper. But you know what, even shitty software that’s e solves a task can be useful.
Amateur spaces are the most cost-effective way of raising the general factor of wizardry. Professional-grade work is constrained on a lot of narrower things.
The problem is that most hackerspaces are not this: ”warehouse filled with whatever equipment one could possibly need to make things and run experiments in a dozen different domains”
most hackerspaces that I’ve seen are fairly cramped spaces full of junk hardware. which is understandable: rent is very high and new equipment is very expensive. but would be cool to have access to something like: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=530540257789037
Yeah, hackerspaces are an obvious place to look for wizard power, but something about them feels off. Like, they’re trying to be amateur spaces rather than practicing full professional-grade work.
And no, I do not want underlings, whether wizard underlings or otherwise! That’s exactly what the point isn’t.
You aren’t looking for professional. That takes systems and time, and frankly, king power. Hackers/Makers are about doing despite not going that route, with a philosophy of learning from failure. Now you may be interested in subjects that are more rare in the community, but your interests will inspire others.
I’m a software engineer by trade. I kind of think of myself as an artificer: taking a boring bit of silicone and enchanting it with special abilities. I always tell people the best way to become a wizard like me is to make shitty software. Make something you know, something small, and that sounds like fun. It’ll be terrible and barely functional, but it’ll be yours, and the next one will be a little less shitty. Keep at that, until you can start thinking at higher levels of abstraction. eventually, your work will be less and less shitty, and before you know it it’ll be good.
Hackers/Makers encourage amateur work, because that’s where most people are, because they’re just starting out. Make no mistake, there are professionals in the community, but no one expects you to be up to their standards. Instead, they’ll help you make things a little less shitty.
Make it. Then make it work. Then make it right.
Failure is your teacher.
I think this is importantly wrong.
Taking software engineering as an example: there are lots of hobbyists out there who have done tons of small programming projects for years, and write absolutely trash code and aren’t getting any better, because they’re not trying to learn to produce professional-quality code (or good UI, or performant code). Someone who’s done one summer internship with an actual software dev team will produce much higher quality software. Someone who’s worked a little on a quality open-source project will also produce much higher quality software.
In practice, that seems-to-me to generalize to most areas of engineering and craftsmanship. Plenty of hobbyists go screw around with things, and they just want to screw around with things; they don’t care about polishing their outputs, so they never develop half the skills a professional is forced to develop. And often, it’s not that much more time or effort or money to develop the extra skills! It’s a matter of making the right kind of effort, moreso than a matter of time or investment.
There are hobbyists who’s programming ability is lower than that of the average professional programmer. There are however also people who have historically called themselves hackers who’s skill at programming exceeds that of the average professional programmer. One example that was remerable to me was the guy who was giving a talk at the Chaos Computer Congress about how we was on vacation in Taiwan and because he had nothing better to do he cracked their electronic payment system that the Taiwanese considered secure before he went on his vacation.
At a good Hackerspace you do have a culture that cares about craftmanship and polishing skills.
Oh man, of people I’ve interviewed, the college graduates are next to useless. There are exceptions, but that’s true of those that have less traditional backgrounds too. There are way more talentless hacks than skilled professionals. Even at the graduate level.
If they’re there because of a paycheck, you can keep them. I want the people on my team that do it because they love it, and they have since they were a kid. They’re the ones that keep up, and improve the fastest—I am certainly biased.
With the new generative AI assistants, we’re going to have way more who are new and dabbling. Hopefully more of them are inspired to go deeper. But you know what, even shitty software that’s e solves a task can be useful.
Amateur spaces are the most cost-effective way of raising the general factor of wizardry. Professional-grade work is constrained on a lot of narrower things.
Yeah, the underling part was a joke :D
The problem is that most hackerspaces are not this:
”warehouse filled with whatever equipment one could possibly need to make things and run experiments in a dozen different domains”
most hackerspaces that I’ve seen are fairly cramped spaces full of junk hardware. which is understandable: rent is very high and new equipment is very expensive.
but would be cool to have access to something like:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=530540257789037