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There is a book writen by Paul Graham, creator of HN: Hackers and Painters[1] And there is one tradition to call a hacker to someone who hacks(with software an
by falava 10y ago
There is a book writen by Paul Graham, creator of HN: Hackers and Painters[1]
And there is one tradition to call a hacker to someone who hacks(with software and hardware)[2], doing clever and/or ugly things, and that is not exactly to be a programmer (and also not exactly a security breaker, the other tradition for the hacker name[3])
I think that following the first tradition, the name of the site is well deserved.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack
[3] http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/ http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of...
- geoka9 10y agoThere's also a tradition for peers to "bestow" that title on someone who they feel deserves it. You don't call yourself a hacker just like you don't call yourself a maestro.
- falava 10y agoFair enough :) Edit: But it's like Surgeon's Journal. No one is called a hacker only because they reads HN, right?
- enzanki_ars 10y agoSee also: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html hacker: n. [...] 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. [...]
- dragonwriter 10y agoTangentially, abusing code blocks for quotes is ugly on desktop and basically unreadable on mobile (the latter because it prevents proper reflowing based on screen width.)
- enzanki_ars 10y agoFixed the code block. I used an 80 character line limit, but I forgot phones have far less than that. Thank you for the reminder.
- falava 10y agoSee also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacks_at_the_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacks_at_the_Massachusetts_Ins... > Hacks at the MIT are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness Edit: And this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture > Therefore, the hacker culture originally emerged in academia in the 1960s around the MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT AI Laboratory. > Richard Stallman explains about hackers who program: > What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming. They wanted to make their programs that they used be as good as they could. They also wanted to make them do neat things. They wanted to be able to do something in a more exciting way than anyone believed possible and show "Look how wonderful this is. I bet you didn't believe this could be done."