Brit

Really enjoying the fantasy of organizing a "Grumpy Old Hacker Conference" where folks talk War Stories, Alternate visions of computing, User Empowerment, and "Why the fuck did you put a computer in that?"

I don't know where it would be or who my keynote speakers would be but I'm enjoying the idea.

I guess I'm targeting the kind of energy @bcantrill brought to his Oral Tradition in Software Engineering talk at Monktoberfest. 🤔 Other examples welcome. 😄

Mar 19 at 5:28pmWeb
Show threadTROG2d ago
@kingcons @bcantrill Something like this could partially fill the empty space left behind by Strange Loop.
Show threadBrit2d ago
@TROG 100% yes. A buddy of mine, @honkfestival, who I met at strange loop have been passing the "Grumpy old hacker conf" joke back and forth for years. I think it originated after we saw Chuck Moore give a talk actually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PclgBd6_Zs
"Programming a 144-computer chip to minimize power" - Chuck Moore (2013)

YouTube
Show threadShae Erisson2d ago

@kingcons I have some really hairy war stories. The most gripping is 1999 when I was a java programmer, the last Unix sysadmin was leaving, and the owner told me that I could go from Java dev to sysadmin with two weeks of training.

We had AIX, Ultrix, SunOS, Solaris, Irix, RedHat, SuSE, HP/UX and some others.
We hosted the websites for the largest baseball teams.

I got fired after nine months. It was a character building experience.

Show threadBrit2d ago
@shapr oh god looool, outstanding <3 This could make a really fun talk. 😈