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I've noticed this tendency in myself and thought about the 'why' a lot, and I think it comes down to subconsciously factoring in the cost of lock-in, or worse,

by cwalv 2y ago

I've noticed this tendency in myself and thought about the 'why' a lot, and I think it comes down to subconsciously factoring in the cost of lock-in, or worse, lack of access to fix/improve a tool I've come to rely on

TheDong 2y ago
For me, a larger part than "cost of lock-in" is the "hacker spirit", the curiosity to understand how it works. Sure, I can pay google or fastmail to host a mailserver for me, but that deprives me of the joy of configuring and updating dovecot/postfix/etc, writing custom backup scripts, writing my own anti-spam tooling, etc. I want to know how all those pieces work. Sure, I can pay kagi to search its index of webpages for me, but that deprives me of the joy of creating and running a botnet to index webpages, storing 100s of terrabytes of scraped data, and writing my own search code. Targeting hackers is indeed a sucker's game.
- lqstuart 2y ago
  I think this spirit is totally lost on most people in this field. It’s tempting to say younger generations but it’s everyone. It always amazes me when I meet someone who has spent 10+ years in this field and doesn’t even care how anything but their shitty Kafka-Flink pipelines work.
  - sgarland 2y ago
    If that; I’ve met plenty who only care that they work, not how they work. As someone who works in infra and dabbles in coding, this is a continual bugbear, because often I’ll find an optimization while troubleshooting “my” problem, and the dev team is disinterested in implementing it. Their endpoints are meeting their SLO, so who cares?
- Bjorkbat 2y ago
  I've honestly thought of hacker spirit as embodying a kind of homesteader ethos in a way. There's this homesteading book I bought a long time ago when I was in college, rich with illustrations on how to do everything from raise animals and grow food to building a house, processing lumber, drilling a well, everything. The same fascination I have with homesteading and DIY culture extends into my interest in technology, and I suspect this is the same with a lot of developers as well.
- popcorncowboy 2y ago
  > but that deprives me of the joy of configuring and updating dovecot/postfix/etc, writing custom backup scripts, writing my own anti-spam tooling I'm 90% sure you're serious, but that didn't stop me having the best belly laugh for a solid few minutes at this. Thank you.

by cwalv 2y ago

TheDong 2y ago

For me, a larger part than "cost of lock-in" is the "hacker spirit", the curiosity to understand how it works. Sure, I can pay google or fastmail to host a mailserver for me, but that deprives me of the joy of configuring and updating dovecot/postfix/etc, writing custom backup scripts, writing my own anti-spam tooling, etc. I want to know how all those pieces work. Sure, I can pay kagi to search its index of webpages for me, but that deprives me of the joy of creating and running a botnet to index webpages, storing 100s of terrabytes of scraped data, and writing my own search code. Targeting hackers is indeed a sucker's game.

lqstuart 2y ago
I think this spirit is totally lost on most people in this field. It’s tempting to say younger generations but it’s everyone. It always amazes me when I meet someone who has spent 10+ years in this field and doesn’t even care how anything but their shitty Kafka-Flink pipelines work.
- sgarland 2y ago
  If that; I’ve met plenty who only care that they work, not how they work. As someone who works in infra and dabbles in coding, this is a continual bugbear, because often I’ll find an optimization while troubleshooting “my” problem, and the dev team is disinterested in implementing it. Their endpoints are meeting their SLO, so who cares?
Bjorkbat 2y ago
I've honestly thought of hacker spirit as embodying a kind of homesteader ethos in a way. There's this homesteading book I bought a long time ago when I was in college, rich with illustrations on how to do everything from raise animals and grow food to building a house, processing lumber, drilling a well, everything. The same fascination I have with homesteading and DIY culture extends into my interest in technology, and I suspect this is the same with a lot of developers as well.
popcorncowboy 2y ago
> but that deprives me of the joy of configuring and updating dovecot/postfix/etc, writing custom backup scripts, writing my own anti-spam tooling I'm 90% sure you're serious, but that didn't stop me having the best belly laugh for a solid few minutes at this. Thank you.