Re: Hacker Language (was Re: Language comparison)

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:21:30 +0000, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@...> wrote:
> If you want a hacker's conlang you have to first consider the type of
> culture you're aiming for. You need to have firmly in your mind what
> kind of culture/society you're designing for if you want a conlang
> perfect for that particular culture. So what are the most marked
> features of hacker culture?
> 1) Emphasis on acquiring knowledge, usually through personal experience
> and experimentation rather than through, for example, lectures, classes etc
> 2) The hoarding of knowledge. In my experience, although a hacker might
> choose to associate with particular people and help them, in general the
> hacker isn't so interested on passing on knowledge. At times the culture
> tends to become similar to the shamanistic systems of other cultures:
> while a shaman might choose to take on an apprentice, in general being a
> shaman is a matter of personal learning and then hoarding the acquired
> knowledge rather than giving it out freely. A hacker is the ultimate
> individual, because his or her focus is on the self rather than the
> society, and this was true also of the shamans. While they might
> sometimes benefit their society, their ultimate focus was on their own
> knowledge and power, and they could do harm as well as good to their
> community.
> 3) The desire to compete and to demonstrate the knowledge they possess.
> After all, what's the point in being really smart and knowledgeable if
> no one knows it? This can sometimes contract (2), since most hackers
> want to demonstrate their skills without also giving out too much of
> their knowledge to other people, since doing so weakens them relative to
> others.
I disagree.  One of the most important parts of the definition of
"hacker" is the sharing of information (not necessarily to the extreme
of Stallman).  Some people don't share, but they (probably) shouldn't
be called hackers.  See:
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/H/hacker-ethic.html (and also:
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html )

> Now, what vocabulary do you need? What kind of hackers did you mean? If
> you mean computer hackers, you will have to allow for a large influx of
> English loans into your conlang, if you want to talk about "Microsoft",
> "Intel", "Pentium", "Athlon", etc. If for instance your syllable
> structure is CVCVCV... then you're going to have to butcher any new
> borrowed computing term to introduce it into your language, and there
> are so many technical terms in computing you'd be taking a lot on to
> invent equivalents for everything from scratch. I guess you could borrow
> the terms from another language though... I'd guess the Chinese have
> invented their own computing terms for a start.
> Do you want this language to be specific to hacker activities, or to be
> able to talk about pretty much anything? (slightly OT, if it's aimed at
> hackers I suggest your first word should mean "porn" lol).
You're worried about *vocabulary*?!  Surely the interesting thing will
be the *grammar*.  It should be heavily influenced by computer
languages: a few things that could be borrowed (off the top of my
organiser, from a Real Soon Now conlang for GE dragons from a
Roman-Empire-survived conworld):
* recursive lists - LISP
* references - sed/MIXAL
* regexen - UN*X
* returnants - comma from C; semicolon (?) from Smalltalk
* set theory
* subobjects - C++ / Inform
* the position/time system - General Relativity
* packets (including attitudinals & metadata) - TCP/IP
* currying
* simple repeating of pieces with substitutions: "And then the same
with foo in the position marked '2'"
* lambda expressions (replace some "illogical" features of English) -
lambda calculus

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