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date: 2018-06-15
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> But as more nontechnical people bought computers, the things that impressed hackers were not as essential. While the programs themselves had to maintain a certain standard of quality, it was quite possible that the most exacting standards—those applied by a hacker who wanted to add one more feature, or wouldn’t let go of a project until it was demonstrably faster than anything else around—were probably counterproductive. What seemed more important was marketing. There were plenty of brilliant programs which no one knew about. Sometimes hackers would write programs and put them in the public domain, give them away as easily as John Harris had lent his early copy of Jawbreaker to the guys at the Fresno computer store. But rarely would people ask for public domain programs by name: they wanted the ones they saw advertised and discussed in magazines, demonstrated in computer stores. It was not so important to have amazingly clever algorithms. Users would put up with more commonplace ones.
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> The Hacker Ethic, of course, held that every program should be as good as you could make it (or better), infinitely flexible, admired for its brilliance of concept and execution, and designed to extend the user’s powers. Selling computer programs like toothpaste was heresy. But it was happening. Consider the prescription for success offered by one of a panel of high-tech venture capitalists, gathered at a 1982 software show: “I can summarize what it takes in three words: marketing, marketing, marketing.” When computers are sold like toasters, programs will be sold like toothpaste. The Hacker Ethic notwithstanding.
[Hackers: Heroes of Computer Revolution](http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/hackers), by Steven Levy.
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