Re: Managing Engineers

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Andrew Plato wrote:
> 
> > Most programmers insist that "hacker" doesn't mean a person who
> > breaks into other people's computers illegally, but someone who
> > likes to nose around learning how things work (that's a "cracker").
> > Originally, I had no formal technical background at all, but I've
> > learned and thrived and get along with most of the developers
> > because I have the same type of curiosity.
> 
> Funny you would mention this, Bruce. My company has a permanent contract to do
> all tech and user docs for a network security firm (Network ICE).  We faced
> this exact issue early in the documentation cycle. The Network ICE CTO, a
> brilliant genius type, was insistent to me that I not use the term "hacker" in
> a derogatory way.  This spawned a debate between us. My contention was that the
> average joe cannot or does not discern this difference. When people hear
> "hacker" they think of Wargames or Sneakers. They don't think of cute, cuddly
> nerds tinkering with computers. The CTO felt this was an unfair stereotype of
> people who just like to figure out complex puzzles.
> 
> Eventually, I won that battle but not after conceding to differentiate that
> difference at least to some extent in the documentation. The results of that
> battle are peppered throughout our docs.
> 
> Andrew Plato
> 

Programmers seem to have their own little sub-culture of political
correctness. Besides hacker/cracker, in my field, there's Linux vs
GNU/Linux. One of my ongoing battles is to persuade them that the
distinctions that mean so much to them are meaningless to the
average person, and potentially misleading. All the same, talking to
programmers, I'm careful to make the same distinctions. After all,
one of the purposes of language is to show who's part of an in-group
and who isn't. I'll never be mistaken for a programmer, but I'm more
acceptable if I use their language.

I suspect that the reason for this subculture is that the
programmers value precision, while the media tends to large, sloppy
terms and journalists often don't have a good understanding of the
topics they cover. Look, for example, at how often the media reports
that a gene has been discovered, or that it is responsible for a
certain condition. In fact, "gene" is a more or less obsolete
concept, and the connections between genes and illnesses or diseases
is often fairly weak or limited to specific instances.

(Of course, in making this statement, I exclude myself. Naturally,
as a journalist, I am benignly all-knowing and error free).

-- 
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7189 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"If religion is the opium of the people, then TV is the heroin."
- Kev Carmody

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