Technology

Learn lots of programming languages – it’s easy and good for your brain! 🧠

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Learn lots of programming languages – it’s easy and good for your brain! 🧠

One afternoon a few years back I got a book out of the library and taught myself Python and graphical programming using Qt using the online documentation mostly for writing plugins for my own use in QGIS for map making. Then one day I realized that once you understand the signals and slots of Qt, you can write apps pretty easily on it using C++.

I use Python on and off, although I am lazy and do a lot more PHP than I probably should including PHP on the command line for scripting. Been studying up more though on Python as it is a very compact and powerful language to use. Python doesn’t require a lot of typing. Years ago I used to do a Perl for writing CGI scripts for websites, and lately I’ve been reading up on Perl for remembering the old days.

I sometimes program microprocessors like the Arduino and ESP32 to control the lighting and other purposes in C. Microprocessor programming is fun because every bit of memory is precious, you have think about efficiency constantly and how you allocate memory. Plus you can end up with a lot of odd bugs that are fun to swat because your often are manually allocating memory.

For fun one afternoon a few years back I taught myself x86 Assembler and also the legacy languages FORTRAN and COBOL. While I’m no expert at any of those languages, with the help of the internet for documentation I could write, debug and edit those languages somewhat competently. I kind of like COBOL, it’s kind of hillarious on how you have to tell the computer every step you want it to do in great detail. Kind of like driving a Model T with manual spark retard.

How did I learn so many computer languages? Well I only took Computer Science 1 and a Data Structures class in college. But it turns out that computer programming is a lot like driving a car. You can learn how to drive on a Ford, but you can hop in a Toyota and drive it. When you hop in the Toyota, you’ll have to look around to see where the gear shifter and defroster button is but with a good look and maybe a peek at the owner manual, you’ll be pretty competent driver.

Learning multiple programming languages isn’t hard once you get the basic concepts of computer programming. 🖥️

After all, you are doing essentially the same thing regardless of the language – it will be compiled into Assembler and ultimately opcodes for the processor to consume. So just like an automobile at a fundamental level they all work basically the same way.

Why hackers often don’t have internet at home 🖥

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Why hackers often don’t have internet at home 🖥

Many computer hackers – that is people who write or hack together their own software don’t have internet at home. That might seem odd but actually that’s not uncommon as many hackers have a real aversion to technology or how it’s used for social control and advertising. Hackers, while benefiting from the internet as a source of knowledge often find things like social media and the internet a distraction from their work, so they are glad to keep their homes internet free.

Perl OOP

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Perl OOP

Bless you, OOP is so weird in the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.

 

Hacker ethic – Wikipedia

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Hacker ethic – Wikipedia

In addition to those principles, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in chapter 2, The Hacker Ethic:[11] The ethics he described in chapter 2 are:

1. "Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!"

Levy is recounting hackers' abilities to learn and build upon pre-existing ideas and systems. He believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart, fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things.[12][13] Access aids the expansion of technology.

2. "All information should be free"

Linking directly with the principle of access, information needs to be free for hackers to fix, improve, and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity.[14] In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information,[15] a concept known as transparency in the social sciences. As Stallman notes, "free" refers to unrestricted access; it does not refer to price.[16]

3. "Mistrust authority—promote decentralization"

The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that they need in their quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line.[15] Hackers believe that bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems.

4. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position"

Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill. Levy articulates that criteria such as age, sex, race, position, and qualification are deemed irrelevant within the hacker community.[13] Hacker skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. Such a code within the hacker community fosters the advance of hacking and software development. In an example of the hacker ethic of equal opportunity,[17] L Peter Deutsch, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0 community, though he was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.

5. "You can create art and beauty on a computer"

Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions.[18] A program's code was considered to hold a beauty of its own, having been carefully composed and artfully arranged.[19] Learning to create programs which used the least amount of space almost became a game between the early hackers.[13]

6. "Computers can change your life for the better"

Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, given their lives focus, and made their lives adventurous. Hackers regarded computers as Aladdin's lamps that they could control.[20] They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the hacker ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world.[21] The hackers succeeded in turning dreams of endless possibilities into realities. The hacker's primary object was to teach society that "the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one" (Levy 230:1984)[13]

Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

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‘Welcome to the Mesh, Brother’: Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

Mr. Heredia is a 19-year-old volunteer with NYC Mesh, a nonprofit community Wi-Fi initiative, and he was there to install a router that would bring inexpensive Wi-Fi to the building. Mr. Cambridge’s family said they had become fed up with the take-it-or-leave-it pricing for spotty service that internet providers seem to get away with in this part of Brooklyn.

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Mr. Heredia crouched to affix the router to a plumbing vent, positioning it so the Wi-Fi signal could avoid the tree down the block. An app on his phone beeped to indicate the strength of the connection. Higher in pitch and more rapid was good. Mr. Cambridge whipped out his phone to search for NYC Mesh among the available networks. “It just came up!”