In a marvelous college lecture in front of a class of engineering students, V. Hunter Adams professed his love for embedded engineering, but he might as well have been singing the songs of our people – the hackers. If you occasionally feel the need to explain to people why you do what you do, at fancy cocktail parties or something, this talk is great food for thought. It’s about as good a “Why We Hack” as I’ve ever seen.
Among the zingers, “projects are filter removers” stuck out. When you go through life, there are a lot of things that you kinda understand. Or maybe you’ve not even gotten around to thinking about whether you understand them or not, and just take them for granted. Life would all simply be too complicated if you took it all sufficiently seriously. Birdsong, Bluetooth, the sun in the sky, the friction of your car’s tire on various surfaces. These are all incredibly deep subjects, when you start to peel back the layers.
And Hunter’s point is that if you are working on a project that involves USB, your success or failure depends on understanding USB. There’s no room for filters here – the illusion that it “just works” often comes crashing down until you learn enough to make it work. Some of his students are doing projects cooperatively with the ornithology department, classifying and creating birdsong. Did you know that birds do this elaborate frequency modulation thing when they sing? Once you hear it, you know, and you hear it ever more.
So we agree with Hunter. Dive into a project because you want to get the project done, sure, but pick the project because it’s a corner of the world that you’d like to shine light into, to remove the filters of “I think I basically understand that”. When you get it working, you’ll know that you really do. Hacking your way to enlightenment? We’ve heard crazier things.
tl;dr anyone?
That’s it. Just “make it work” might be enough for a maker, never for a hacker.
note: there’s nothing wrong in being a maker, the difference is just in the objectives. Even a hacker can be a maker, for instance when he replicates something to be used as a tool.
oh puhleeeze…. get off your high horse…. hacks are well – hacks….folks who do shit half azz – see it all the time in “the trades”….you know how many stop work orders I sign ? (as a code enforcement inspector for the local AHJ). Some of the “hacks” i’ve seen doing “hack” work is mind boggling…..plumbers (who no speaka da English), who cut engineered trusses to run a pex line, electricians who ‘jerry rig’ some rube goldberg monstrosity on a main panel….the list is endless.
So some ‘hacker’ throwing together a spaghetti abomination of wire for a robotic arm with no regard to cable dressing or bolt torque is just par for the course. Hacker / Maker , same shit different clothes
Lumping all of this together is uncalled for, and you are probably well aware.
The plumber that cuts load bearing beams is “a hack”, not a a hacker, they don’t care to learn what their shortcut will affect. You and I both know that a pex run doesn’t need a truss to be cut in the first place.
Likewise the electrician, definitely not an outfit hired for quality and likely liable if a bank or fire department gets involved.
Meanwhile the hacker trying to get a robot arm working? They aren’t doing this on contract, they probably aren’t going to destroy their house either, but if they do it’s their mistake directly.
Lighten up, turn off work when coming here and it’ll be more fun. Or at least only turn it on when it makes sense.
Naming is not explaining.
For example, if I go to the doctor’s with weird unspecific muscle and joint pains that don’t seem to correspond with any well known disease, the doctor might give me a diagnosis saying that I’m suffering from “fibromyalgia”. That’s Latin for “joint and muscle pain”. Gee thanks, that clears up a lot.
A hacker or a maker doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a label that people use for self-promotion and exclusion of others, just like any other contrived identity.
Filters? High pass, low pass, particle size, wavelength? WTH.
i disagree. i have the curiosity. and i do a lot of things just because i want to understand them. but hacking definitely encompasses blindly stabbing at it until it kinda works and then forgetting about it
“but hacking definitely encompasses blindly stabbing at it until it kinda works…”
“shotgun” approach is not true hacking, IMHO.
Hacking as used in Hunter’s approach is a kind of enlightenment that comes from a deeper understanding of basic principles and is applicable to electronic, automotive, physic, chemical, software, etc. The end product of a great hacking experience is an enhancement to one’s knowledge.
Assist AI: Hacking refers to creatively modifying or repurposing a product or system to exceed its original design limitations, often to improve functionality or adapt it for new uses. This approach emphasizes resourcefulness and innovation, allowing users to actively engage in the design process rather than just being passive consumers.
i like ‘allowing users to actively engage in the design process’. it means each user will bring their idiosyncratic and temporal needs to their engagement. and sometimes some users will rejoice in their ability to [re]design something without barely touching their ignorance :)
“Did you know that birds do this elaborate frequency modulation thing when they sing?”
I heard a bird call once that I swear sounded like FSK. And on a different occasion, one that sounded just like squeaky motor brushes as the armature comes to a stop (like in an old electric drill).
“…working on a project that involves USB, your success or failure depends on understanding USB.”
It wasn’t until I did a deep dive on USB Audio Class that I got a project working correctly. The manufacturer’s example code was cheating and was unsuitable as-is. Also it’s crazy how many mass-produced products have USB descriptors that are just_plain_wrong – it’s amazing that it even works at all. I salute the brave programmers that tackle USB Host Controller programming.
It’s incredibly common for laptop USB to just be out of compliance on a number of things, with no way to know how without direct testing.
The old adage “Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know” definitely applies to USB software and hardware development.
I’ll just leave it here:
“Fahre fort, übe nicht allein die Kunst, sondern dringe auch in ihr Inneres; sie verdient es. Denn nur die Kunst und die Wissenschaft erhöhen den Menschen bis zur Gottheit.” Ludwig van Beethoven.
(usually translated as “Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.” – though)