

Ask HN : Is hacker a good terminology? - bo_Olean

When the word hack is used, despite other elite explanations available in Oxford or Cambridge dictionaries people[1] will take it wrong - Hacker is a person who will make harm to your machine or the person who will break your computer.<p>Convince me, and I will others that Hacker the term itself defines a nice human/person living behind.<p>or I would like to know why people say so.<p>Edit:
[1](Your mother or your friend who doesn't know what HN is )
======
T_S_
It's not a bad way to discriminate between people based on how much they think
about technology. The less informed only see the term when it appears in a bad
news headline. Others know there is more that one meaning.

At Hacker Dojo we have experienced this first hand. Once we had a tv crew show
up asking about the arrest of some Anonymous members. Nothing at all to do
with us. There have been a couple of times we wished the name was the Mountain
View Yacht Club.

------
gharbad
The term hacker as someone who fiddles with technology out of curiosity
predates the negative term for a malicious computer user. I believe it even
predates computers.

~~~
mkr-hn
14th century: <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker>

------
nhannah
Hacker is fine, all job descriptions looking for a "ninja hacker" or for that
matter any job descriptions prefixed with the word ninja should be ignored. I
have never met someone serious about programming that liked to be called a
ninja or thought of themselves as such. I have met many people who were very
into start-ups but had no CS or Engineering background that loved to give
themselves and others silly prefixes though. In a nut shell call yourself what
you like, but be wary of those too interested in titles as they are probably
trying to make up for something.

------
thetabyte
This will answer all your questions: <http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-
howto.html>

~~~
mhd
This would be much more applicable if there'd be a culture distinguishing the
two kinds here at HN. Most submissions about Anonymous or "cyberwar" call them
hackers, i.e. there's no "hackers vs. crackers" mentality. (Never mind that
for me, having grown up in the 80s, a "cracker" is someone who circumvents the
copy protection of a game)

Still, considering that the term has morphed once again into something greater
("life hackers" etc.), I don't see a real danger in the name of this site.
Never mind that we've got way more capitalistic neo-yuppies here than
phreaking aging hippies…

~~~
mindcrime
I expect that most of us just assume that context will be a sufficient
discriminator, and don't feel the need to always call out the distinction
explicitly.

~~~
mhd
I think that's the core of it. Someone who plasters stickers on their Ikea
coffee table is a "hacker", as is someone who breaks into the NSA, as is
someone who, well, creates yet another specialized social network using RoR…
(I'd say complaining about the loss of meaning would be a much better topic
than arguing about a potential bad reputation)

------
mkr-hn
People think a lot of wrong things. It's more productive to inform them when
it comes up than it is to change the word you use.

------
parasitius
I tried but...

"a terminology"? "a person who will make harm"?

English? Can you speak it?

~~~
uvTwitch
Clearly not that well, perhaps it's not their native language.

Polite, motherfucker, can you be it?

