I have so much too do, but somehow last night I decided that rather
than do work, I would finish of reading "
The hacker and the ants"
by Rudy Rucker. I can't be bothered explaining the plot, but
it involved writing software for robots in various Silicon Valley start ups.
Some quotes
"I sighed heavily. Look Ben I want to use a real language, not
a LISP language. A language with documentation and support would be nice
too, a language faminar to more than thirteen Taiwanese graduate students?
Can I keep woking with SuperC?"
(There was a high level language to program the robots in one of the companys
he worked at, that he started to like a bit later).
Title of chapter seven "Bloodlust hacking frenzy".
Another quote
"Even though Ross and I were still exchanging scientific information,
we were at the same time in the throes of a flame war. But it didn't
really matter. As Roger Coolridge had once told me, if you are a
serious hacker you don't let flames bother you. Instead you grow thick
scales."
Anyway the novel has a subplot of him breaking up with how wife that
was not so interesting as the computer science stuff.
Rucker has had an interesting career. He started by getting a PhD
in maths. Then he wrote many Science fiction novels. After 10 years
of that he got a job a University teaching computer science, with
out an experience in programming. He then converted him self
into c++/java hacker. (This explains some of his rants against
LISP in his book, that surprised me for a Professor in a computer
science department).
Anyway I will checkout more work by Rudy Rucker. It looks like
some of his work is infected by the hippie virus, but that is
just the "pot talking" -- the hacker maths background seems
sound.