spiralofhope

Programming > Hackers >

From the OpenBeos (now Haiku) newsletter, Issue 20, 17 Jun 2002

https://web.archive.org/web/20021222132851/open-beos.sourceforge.net/nsl.php?mode=display&id=20 (partial cache)

Artists are dreamers, planners, thinkers on a higher abstract plane. You can usually identify them by their sloppy, casual clothes and unkempt long, long hair. Think of the stereotypical new-wave geek so in fashion during the dot com boom, coding at his desk all night long listening to blaring, heavy metal music. They like art and music. They hate conformity. They believe in a kind of perfect expression which they are always reaching towards. Their source code is well designed, well commented, but always incomplete. Coding is done in bursts — short intervals where a massive amount of code is banged out at once, followed by days or weeks of inactivity while they ponder their next move. Quite often, the same source code is completely re-written from scratch several times. It’s got to be perfect, but it never is. They are funny, bright, quit-witted, sarcastic, and very prone to bad moods and depression. They are well liked, for the most part, because of their brilliance and wit and irreverant humor, but are feared too, because of their moods swings and occasional outbursts of caustic anger.