This brief history of hackerdom discussed what the real programmer is. Based on what I learned, real programmers are the people who are associated with batch of scientific computing. They are the ones who discovered things and make things work out. But nowadays, we have this kind of open source that makes it possible for people to hack. We have now the culture of open source which is a big difference from the past.
Second, they mentioned about the early hackers. Before, we all know that the first computer network was called Arpanet. This allows them to link together as a community. The hacker culture was spread out and eventually has this kind of hacker dictionary. Because of many computers that came, many universities bought it and the hacker culture more grew. This whole paragraph only shows that there are eventually hackers or hacker culture is alive in the past through many network computers such as Arpanet and etc.
Then came, the rise of Unix. A Bell Labs hacker named Ken Thompson invented UNIX. Another hacker named Dennis Ritchie developed “C” to be used in UNIX. With the collaboration of the two, they have won. The good thing about these is they are flexible, user friendly and etc. This encourages the hackers to discover new things and invent using C and UNIX as their software. After UNIX was invented, many operating systems was invented or created.
This book talks about Levy who wrote hackers. He wrote about Mr. Richard M. Stallman, who levy called as the last true hacker (which was proved incorrect by some). Mr. Stallman has a big contribution on the history of hackerdom. He produced high quality FREE software. Unlike any other software, what he did is he makes it available for consumers by offering it free. Universities, enterprises and etc. do not need to pay for that software just to have a licensed. It was called as GNU which means gnu is not UNIX. He makes UNIX as his source or reference to make this GNU, an operating system. Instead of everybody focusing UNIX, he got the attention of people to used GNU. Then came, some microchips and local area network technology that were invented and which again gives impact to hackerdom. A group of UNIX hackers built a company called Sun Microsystems.
The press misapply the term hacker to refer to computer vandals, which continues up to this new generation. Hackers actually means as a real programmers. They are the ones who make programs, applications and software for the needs of people.
As many years came, new microcomputers offer low cost and high speed performance which other old microcomputers were threatened. But their big problem before is the cost of buying software such as operating system to run in their microcomputers. Unix remained expensive and not everybody can afford to buy it. Other operating systems stop to distribute. This makes the world of hackers stop since unix was ending in failure.
With this problem, a student names Linus Torvalds developed a free UNIX kernel using free software tool kits. With his initial attacked, many people attracted and want to help to develop Linux, a full featured of UNIX and open source. They believed that to be able for this Linux to be successfully develop, this must be created by tight small groups. The early beginning of Linux, it was contributed by huge numbers of volunteers in the internet. To maintain the operating system, they need to used it and have some feedbacks to it. Almost everyone contribute to make this Linux works.
We have seen that network people helped each other to make Linux works. After Linux, they have discovered internet and what internet can give to them. And so on…..
-End of “a brief history of hackerdom”-
