Is the term Hacker/hacking been overused or misused in HN and overall?

6 points by dizidoro 14 years ago | 9 comments

That's something that has bordered me for a while. The concept of hacking i have is more or less about changing the behavior of something from the way it's supposed to be. I love that concept. People are using the term like it's same thing as programming.

mchannon 14 years ago |

The term has certainly evolved. Prior to the computer revolution, someone describing your work as hacking would be insulting your work (and you).

Tron and WarGames brought "hacking" in the computer sense to the forefront, referring to gaining unauthorized access to computer systems. It's not quite clear how it went from being paid more than you're worth to unauthorized entry of a skilled nature, though I suppose "hacking" may go back to the physical act of hacking at a lock or a door through persistence. Instead of pursuing a goal without the correct tools, now hacking implies pursuing a goal without the correct tools because no such tools exist; it now involves its own skill.

The scope of the term has expanded from unauthorized access to a system to unauthorized modifications to a system. I think that expansion is fair. Moving from unauthorized modifications to a system to making a new system or authorized modifications is where I think many of us draw the line.

If you have a neat idea but the source code and development environment are designed to help you implement that idea, it's not hacking. If your idea requires changing things that somebody's lawyer thinks ought not be changed, then there's a case to call that hacking.

Dunno about its overuse in HN (haven't seen any examples) but the mainstream media and a few overly ambitious coders (and more so the noncoder people who hire them) are definitely misusing the term. Words like "jealous" and "decimate" are also commonly misused but nobody notices.

jshintaku 14 years ago |

When I was young man, now I feel old just saying that, hacking meant unauthorized access to computer systems. If you were a hacker you were a in general a blackhat because at that point no one knew what pen testing was or a that you could make a living as a white hat. When you got older and realized you could actually go to jail for being a black hat you converted and became a white hat and got a job as a penetration tester or vulnerability assessor.

Now the term "hacking" has been stolen and misused to the point where it has become a synonymous for developer. I suppose no one these days wants to call themselves a programmer or developer as it is a dirty word. Hacker is much cooler.

freestyler_1 14 years ago |

Changing somethings properties to make it do/able to/usable for something else.

Some people used a lot more time/resources/motivation than others and they want some kind of title that sets them apart from the rest... I think hacker is the wrong title for them.

broadwayact 14 years ago |

Unfortunately, I do no believe people that aren't "hackers" themselves, can not fathom the shear spectrum of our mindsets. From hardware to software, to social interactions, and pure ingenuity. A hacker takes-in information from all his/her neural interfaces, and produces more content from that information through her/her physical interfaces as efficiently, and effectively as possible.

A true perpetual motion machine....

brianlynn11 14 years ago |

Grossly overused and misused overall. Too many newbies these days call themselves "hackers" just cuz they know how to edit some CSS.

For me, if you can use the terminal freely and build something functional REAL quickly by tweaking frameworks/apis, then you are at the starting point of a "hacker".

I think if you have high Karma on HN, you probably care enough about the topics here to be a true Hacker.

benologist 14 years ago |

People around here are particularly in love with themselves and like to remind themselves and each other that by filling out the HN registration form they are smarter, leaner, meaner, faster, hackers, entrepreuners, bears, beets, battlestar galactica.

ankurdhama 14 years ago |

For me, Hackers are great thinkers and programming is just one aspect of being hacker. A hacker may think about anything that is interesting and makes him curious. If you don't have curiosity then you cannot be a real hacker.

nekitamo 14 years ago |

Yes. This community is a bit pretentious sometimes.

cr1t1calh1t 14 years ago |

Yes.