- A nuance: Consider a hammer with a cracked handle. What's key is not the hammer crack (bad enough?) or the duct tape repair (good enough?). Instead it's the

- A nuance: Consider a hammer with a cracked handle. What's key is not the hammer crack (bad enough?) or the duct tape repair (good enough?). Instead it's the generality (portable, abstract concepts behind it like 'gluing' 'joining') and availability (common, cheap, simple) of the duct tape that enables the (w)hack. People don't buy duct tape to fix cracked hammers. - Afterthought : A Stack Exchange user answers: "why use duct tape when you could just use super glue" (or rubber bands, zip ties...).