

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

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.
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mchannon
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.

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jshintaku
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.

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freestyler_1
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.

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broadwayact
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....

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brianlynn11
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.

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benologist
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.

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ankurdhama
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.

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nekitamo
Yes. This community is a bit pretentious sometimes.

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cr1t1calh1t
Yes.

