[nycbug-talk] technical terms

[Trish Lynch]

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, Isaac Levy wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'd actually suggest that the base term 'geek' or 'nerd' is the start
> of the negativity, (news for nerds...)
> I'm around a lot of musicialns and artists in my regular life, and if
> any of them spend the same obsessive amount of time in studio
> painting, or making music, then they are viewed as creative- whereas
> if I spend that time hacking unix, I'm called a geek.
>

	I'm actually a member of both groups, and always thought the "work
ethic" and "practice, practice, practice", I learned as a musician served
me well as a hacker/programmer/sysadmin type.


> In the english language, the word geek has a lot of negative baggage...
>
> I somewhat feel that our culture brings a lot more negative vocabulary
> in by starting with this vocabulary.
>

I agree, but I think its starting to turn around since the geeks shall
inherit the earth... *insert intro to Temples of Syrinx from Rush's 2112*

> I'm way more fond of the term 'hacker' than I am geek:
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
> ...
> 2) One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who  enjoys
> programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
>
>
> How do we view ourselves?  NYCBUG is regularly populated with folks
> I'd hardly call socially inept or foolish, and no speaker has yet to
> bit the head off of a live chicken...


ROTFL. Yeah, I'm actually very good socially have many good friends, and I
inspire loyalty, its actually scary when you think about it... I haven't
been around too much in the hacker/OS scene since I got married and had a
kid, but even then it was the same way... I had a tendency to rise up for
some reason. This is not the sign of a socially inept person. Though
socially inept in the computer professional world, where competence is the
#1 indicator of status is different than purely social ventures.

However all three communities I deal with in my life (computer/hacker
types, leather/queer, and musicians) all put very high value in
competence, and the way I work is to be as comptetent and authoritative
about what I am talking about as possible.

The work pays off, I won an Emmy in Interactive Television this past
month.

-Trish

-- 
Trish Lynch					   trish at bsdunix.net
Ecartis Core Team 			      trish at listmistress.org
EFNet IRC Operator/SysAdmin @ irc.dkom.at             AilleCat at EFNet
Key fingerprint = 781D 2B47 AA4B FC88 B919  0CD6 26B2 1D62 6FC1 FF16