4 ms·

Not quite relevant, but always had the question - why fantasy-world game is called NetHack?

• anyfoo 7y ago
  It was developed by multiple people "hacking" on it over the "net", back when "the net" was far from being ubiquitous, and so using it for collaborative software development was still special. Before "nethack", there was "hack", but I don't know much about that, except that it was a clone of "rogue", the original "rogue-like". There is some history here: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Hack https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Hack
  • hippich 7y ago
    Thank you!
  • earenndil 7y ago
    Correction: it wasn't that people were hacking on it, the name 'hack' referred to hacking at monsters.
    • anyfoo 7y ago
      Sorry about that. I was much more sure about the "net" part than the "hack" part, but then the wiki kind of seemed to confirm my guess about why the original "Hack" was called as such: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Hack https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Hack But rereading it now, it just seems like someone looked up the word "hack" after the fact, and your explanation makes more sense.
• iron0013 7y ago
  I have read that, supposedly, "hacking" used to refer to exploring the tunnels underneath a college campus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_and_tunnel_hacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_and_tunnel_hacking
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]