For me the main surprise was to think “Eric Raymond. Huh. Just like the CatB author. Wait—really?! Here?” after which was an “of course! Now it all makes sense!”.
I’d previously noticed the similarities between the hacker ethos and rationality, to a large extent because they were what were attractive to me in the first place. The GS part was new info for me, but both the SF and Zen influences are obvious (though it’s nice to see it so explicitly explained). It feels like, in a certain sense, the hacker ethos is a special case of rationality. Hackers seemed from the outside to be these mystical creatures that used logic and intuition to get closer to a better understanding of computer systems in order to get them to do interesting things. With a focus on clarity, elegance, practicality etc. My understanding of a beisutsukai is someone who does just that, but in all matters, not just computery things. So rationality is a natural extension of being a hacker. Ditto with the mystical aspects which you mentioned earlier. I get the impression that both your writing and the Sequences have the same feel to them, for lack of a better expression.
p.s. - I’d like to thank you for the hacker howto. The “formative” in the earlier comment is spot on. Apart from the general hacker stuff, I also started to learn LISP. For which I’m eternally grateful.
For me the main surprise was to think “Eric Raymond. Huh. Just like the CatB author. Wait—really?! Here?” after which was an “of course! Now it all makes sense!”.
I’d previously noticed the similarities between the hacker ethos and rationality, to a large extent because they were what were attractive to me in the first place. The GS part was new info for me, but both the SF and Zen influences are obvious (though it’s nice to see it so explicitly explained). It feels like, in a certain sense, the hacker ethos is a special case of rationality. Hackers seemed from the outside to be these mystical creatures that used logic and intuition to get closer to a better understanding of computer systems in order to get them to do interesting things. With a focus on clarity, elegance, practicality etc. My understanding of a beisutsukai is someone who does just that, but in all matters, not just computery things. So rationality is a natural extension of being a hacker. Ditto with the mystical aspects which you mentioned earlier. I get the impression that both your writing and the Sequences have the same feel to them, for lack of a better expression.
p.s. - I’d like to thank you for the hacker howto. The “formative” in the earlier comment is spot on. Apart from the general hacker stuff, I also started to learn LISP. For which I’m eternally grateful.