Hacker always was positive. It gained popularity to mean the people who played around with hardware to make home computers before the PC became a commercial pro

Hacker always was positive. It gained popularity to mean the people who played around with hardware to make home computers before the PC became a commercial product, or who found novel ways to play around with the phone system- like you could record and play back touch tone sounds on a tape recorder to make calls. The negative connotation came from the bust of Kevin Mitnick and the American public's shameful lack of knowledge about computers, combined with 1984 style propaganda to scare the public. Hacker or hacking always meant someone who approaches problems in novel ways. Cracker, like a safe cracker, is someone who breaks in for malicious reasons. The kids on 4chan who follow a guide to DDOS a website are script kiddies, by the way. That's what these terms always meant, and we're starting to move back after an era of propaganda.