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What value can I add to the hacker community if I'm not a programmer myself?

13 points by mercs ↗ HN
I enjoy browsing this website. I enjoy reading news about the latest developments in software and technology generally. But I'm not tech savvy. I'm also not particularly motivated to learn programming.

But somehow I want to be part of this community. What value can someone like me add to the hacker economy if I don't know how to program?

10 comments

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runjake
“Those who can’t, teach.”

Sarcasm, up there. I don’t actually believe that quote, but it fits in this context.

Write documentation, write blog posts, make videos about concepts or tools that interest you (enthusiasm is contagious), as you learn them.

Make them for any skill level you feel comfortable with.

32gbsd
Oh god no. Dont encourage this. The last thing we need are more tutorials by none programmers that go nowhere.
ksaj
I'm upgrading my programming chops, and sadly the course I'm taking occasionally has exactly this kind of tutorial in its "Further Resources" section. One was a link to tutorialspoint, if you want to know just how bad it was. The code doesn't even work because all of the examples on the page have parentheses omitted, probably because of a copy error. It drives me nuts because sometimes what they link to is entirely wrong.

I pointed it out in the course forum, but they really seem to not care.

I also noticed this with Common Lisp. It seems absolutely everybody learning Lisp thinks they have so much to offer, they fill Google's search algo up with their "tutorials." But they're all traceable to the source they mangled in trying to make it appear original, and they get ridden with wrong descriptions, etc on top of that.

That, to my mind, is one of modern Lisp's biggest downfalls - 90% of the resources Google will find for you are utter crap. Don't get me started on "Quantum Lisp" because I ended up working for one such shyster for a week before I realized he was hoping I might be able to provide him some legitimacy. He really had none, and was duping everyone around him. Eventually he and his business were escorted out of the building by police, although I was long gone by then and don't know the story behind that one.

Just because you're currently learning something, does not mean you should be writing a tutorial or pretending you are a resource for others.

kazinator
Almost every tech stack or language has this problem. Tons of people out there are "learning by teaching" and producing garbage blogs as the result which, if read by another neophyte, will leave the victim misinformed and dumber by several IQ points. If you think it's bad for Lisp, have you seen the drivel people write about C++?
Bostonian
If you try out open source software that interests you, and after reading the documentation you don't understand how something works or have an idea of how the program could be better, give specific feedback by (for example) raising an issue at GitHub.

I am a Fortran programmer primarily, and most Fortran compilers are written in C. When I encounter bugs I report them at the Intel Fortran forum, GitLab (for LFortran) and bugzilla (for gfortran). So you can contribute to a project written in X without knowing X.

Rodeoclash
I find as a programmer, it's very easy to just want to apply programming to everything. I think the issue lies in the fact that it's very easy to know when you've solved a programming problem. Other problems, say marketing, are very open ended and can not be completed the same way a feature can.

So I'd say, contribute perspective. Contribute ideas and ways of thinking that wouldn't occur to me.

dustractor
If there's a project you care about particularly, there are plenty of things that usually need volunteers to accomplish. Examples include: making icon sets, making themes, moderating forums, proofreading wikis, translation into other languages...
apineda
What aspects are particularly interesting to you and why?
ffwacom
No tech skills? Project manager or product owner.