The day I got into IIT as a research assistant all i was interested was in the blackbucks and spotted deers.I was never into computer science or programming.My assumption about programming is just lines of codes.Nothing much beyond it.Life was just simple till that point of time untill I met a girl.Swaroopa Sinde.Very beautiful,intelligent,hacker and she does things single handedly.She lost her left hand in a accident.She was studying computer science and she said i want to get into singing.I was surprised why a compsci grad from IIT madras wants to end up as a singer.When I asked her why she had put so much efforts to get into IIT and sustain there for 4 years want to take a different career.
Her whole perspective become mine.After that I started splitting this world objects and everything as numbers.Each component as numbers.I started understanding things.Then I took a turn to see how computers worked and now I realise that I want to understand painting.A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting.They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression.
Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.
What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.
I've never liked the term "computer science." The main reason I don't like it is that there's no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they're doing computer science. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers-- studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It's as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.
Sometimes what the hackers do is called "software engineering," but this term is just as misleading. Good software designers are no more engineers than architects are. The border between architecture and engineering is not sharply defined, but it's there. It falls between what and how: architects decide what to do, and engineers figure out how to do it.
What and how should not be kept too separate. You're asking for trouble if you try to decide what to do without understanding how to do it. But hacking can certainly be more than just deciding how to implement some spec. At its best, it's creating the spec-- though it turns out the best way to do that is to implement it.
Perhaps one day "computer science" will, like Yugoslavia, get broken up into its component parts. That might be a good thing. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking.
Bundling all these different types of work together in one department may be convenient administratively, but it's confusing intellectually. That's the other reason I don't like the name "computer science." Arguably the people in the middle are doing something like an experimental science. But the people at either end, the hackers and the mathematicians, are not actually doing science.
The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. They happily set to work proving theorems like the other mathematicians over in the math department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says ``computer science'' on the outside. But for the hackers this label is a problem. If what they're doing is called science, it makes them feel they ought to be acting scientific. So instead of doing what they really want to do, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs feel they ought to be writing research papers.
Come on guys if someone who knows your password or guesses it and uses your profile id,that doesnot mean you are hacked.We do run random processing of data read your mind send bugs with spam,convince you to tell us your data without you knowing that actually you are spilling it out.Just your IP is enough to get things moving.And no one is sparred.We do paint,use free spaces for flow just like architects,dream like a child,breaking things as simple as possible.Its just that we like challenges and we use our imagination to encounter that.We don indulge in privacy infringement,opensourcing ones work.We are just trying to make this world a better place from posers,spamsters and stalkers.We do have ethics.Nothing personal.Just professional.
Cheers time for saturday night beer.
Her whole perspective become mine.After that I started splitting this world objects and everything as numbers.Each component as numbers.I started understanding things.Then I took a turn to see how computers worked and now I realise that I want to understand painting.A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting.They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression.
Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.
What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.
I've never liked the term "computer science." The main reason I don't like it is that there's no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they're doing computer science. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers-- studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It's as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.
Sometimes what the hackers do is called "software engineering," but this term is just as misleading. Good software designers are no more engineers than architects are. The border between architecture and engineering is not sharply defined, but it's there. It falls between what and how: architects decide what to do, and engineers figure out how to do it.
What and how should not be kept too separate. You're asking for trouble if you try to decide what to do without understanding how to do it. But hacking can certainly be more than just deciding how to implement some spec. At its best, it's creating the spec-- though it turns out the best way to do that is to implement it.
Perhaps one day "computer science" will, like Yugoslavia, get broken up into its component parts. That might be a good thing. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking.
Bundling all these different types of work together in one department may be convenient administratively, but it's confusing intellectually. That's the other reason I don't like the name "computer science." Arguably the people in the middle are doing something like an experimental science. But the people at either end, the hackers and the mathematicians, are not actually doing science.
The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. They happily set to work proving theorems like the other mathematicians over in the math department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says ``computer science'' on the outside. But for the hackers this label is a problem. If what they're doing is called science, it makes them feel they ought to be acting scientific. So instead of doing what they really want to do, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs feel they ought to be writing research papers.
Come on guys if someone who knows your password or guesses it and uses your profile id,that doesnot mean you are hacked.We do run random processing of data read your mind send bugs with spam,convince you to tell us your data without you knowing that actually you are spilling it out.Just your IP is enough to get things moving.And no one is sparred.We do paint,use free spaces for flow just like architects,dream like a child,breaking things as simple as possible.Its just that we like challenges and we use our imagination to encounter that.We don indulge in privacy infringement,opensourcing ones work.We are just trying to make this world a better place from posers,spamsters and stalkers.We do have ethics.Nothing personal.Just professional.
Cheers time for saturday night beer.