Ask HN: Hacker Philosophy?

4 points by elcron 16 years ago | 4 comments

I was wondering if there is a philosophy that most encompasses what most hackers on this sight seem to live by.

i.e.: Release early release often, Sharing work vi open source, Simple and well designed vs. feature bloated, etc.

Is there already a name for this philosophy? Is it just the hacker philosophy? What else does/should it include?

Travis 16 years ago |

I'm not sure it's a formal philosophy, but I think the attributes you're describing are lean and open.

elcron 16 years ago | |

I didn't think there was, but I was wondering if there was and it just had a name I was unaware of.

mindcrime 16 years ago |

Well, the "Unix Philosophy" is a big part of what is widely regarded as "hacker culture" so you might give this a look:

There's also the "Hacker Ethic" to look at:

And his stuff doesn't necessarily have a name, but Eric Raymond's writings have been pretty influential to a lot of hackers.

elcron 16 years ago | |

Thank you!