{"id":7325,"date":"2017-01-29T17:50:02","date_gmt":"2017-01-29T22:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7325"},"modified":"2017-01-29T17:55:25","modified_gmt":"2017-01-29T22:55:25","slug":"things-every-hacker-once-knew-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7325","title":{"rendered":"Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The response to this piece has been remarkably broad and positive.  I have to note, though, that I didn&#8217;t write it as a nostalgia trip &#8211; I don&#8217;t miss underpowered computers, primitive tools, and tiny low-resolution displays.<\/p>\n<p>At least people did notice that it isn&#8217;t a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn grumble. I think it&#8217;s good for younger hackers to know these things, but it&#8217;s no fault of theirs that the technological context has changed so much that they don&#8217;t absolutely need to to get work done.  In fact it&#8217;s a sign of progress.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you&#8217;ll occasionally trip over old tech for which forgotten common knowledge is important &#8211; and RS-232, in particular, is still important in niche applications. But the real reason to remember these things is less tangible, and unfortunately difficult for many people to talk about without sliding into sentimentality.<\/p>\n<p>In any kind of craft or profession, I think knowing the way things used to be done, and the issues those who came before you struggled with, is quite properly a source of pride and wisdom.  It gives you a useful kind of perspective on today&#8217;s challenges.<\/p>\n<p>The real reason I wrote this is to encourage that kind of perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Updated version <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catb.org\/esr\/faqs\/things-every-hacker-once-knew\/\">here<\/a>.  With: more about the persistence of octal, current-loop ASR-33s, 36-bit machines and their lingering influence, ASCII shift, a bit more about ASCII-1963, and some error corrections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The response to this piece has been remarkably broad and positive. I have to note, though, that I didn&#8217;t write it as a nostalgia trip &#8211; I don&#8217;t miss underpowered computers, primitive tools, and tiny low-resolution displays. At least people did notice that it isn&#8217;t a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn grumble. I think it&#8217;s good for younger hackers&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7325\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-hacker-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7325"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7332,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325\/revisions\/7332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}