Feeling like a hacker again

Date: October 19th, 2006 by Author: Daniel Elstner

After a somewhat difficult start into my new working life, including illness and missing school, tonight I’ve got some small but real work done. And what’s more I felt like my old hacker-self again. I think the last time I had this feeling of accomplishing something worthwhile in code was back in my huge gtkmm and gvim hacking days. It’s really not a good idea to only do stuff that nobody else will ever see, even if it is interesting and mind-bending. I used to do that way too much.

It feels good being back. And I’m going to blog more regularly too. Promise.

2 Responses

  1. Gabriel Pannwitz says:

    October 25th, 2006 at 20:03

    “It’s really not a good idea to only do stuff that nobody else will ever see, even if it is interesting and mind-bending. I used to do that way too much.”

    Can you please elaborate a little?

    Do you mean that you did to much of your own private stuff?

    Or rather that you worked on projects that were more “under the hood” so to speak, meaning that they did stuff that are mostly invisible to the end user?

    Thanks,

    Gabriel

  2. danielk says:

    October 25th, 2006 at 21:41

    The former — that is, I did too much stuff that wasn’t of much use to other people. Actually it wasn’t even useful for me, apart from the educational value. What happened is that I worked both by myself and for myself and as a result got trapped within the confines of my own mind.

    I don’t mind working on under-the-hood stuff. Working on publically visible stuff can of course provide you with an additional morale boost, which is great. But in my situation I didn’t lack just spectators, but coworkers, too.