I don't think this article really has a lot of relevance, the ESR style of hacker doesn't have all that much in common with this community tbh, and those that do gravitate in that direction have probably already seen this.
Or I'm just a grumpy ass at christmas. Could go either way.
I think that the HN crowd has more of a Silicon Valley business flavor to it. (As one might expect from a site sponsored by YC.) At the same time, the "Open source/Free Software/Unix Hacker" has a lot of overlap.
My issue with this article isn't its subject matter, but that it's written by ESR.
(Though in ESR's defense, I think it was through reading one of his articles or blog posts that I discovered the PG essays.)
ESR telling people how to be hackers is pretty galling when you consider what a massive pile of bugs it is/was. For my money, getmail (http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) is far better value.
Back when I was in high school, I had no internet connection at home, so I had to go to "internet cafes", download some interesting stuff on a 1.44 mb floppy and read it at home. That's when I came across this article. It really motivated me back then.
The argument against Java as a starting language (libraries doing too much for you) is equally applicable to any high level language. I don't see how this is unique to Java.
I don't think this article really has a lot of relevance, the ESR style of hacker doesn't have all that much in common with this community tbh, and those that do gravitate in that direction have probably already seen this.
Or I'm just a grumpy ass at christmas. Could go either way.