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by lsofzz 2385 days ago
> 1. I have no idea why "hacking" aka "going fast and breaking things" is so glorified while "building good reliable programs" aka "good programming" is not.

The way I see it, `going fast and breaking things' is an iterative process. IMHO, it should not be viewed as `go fast, break things and _never_ iterate to fix things'.

Just thought I'd toss my two cents on it.

> 2. How come that someone thinks of himself/herself that he/she has the right to say who is a hacker and who is not.

No idea why you feel binary. If you like to call yourself a hacker - fuck it - go for it.

The connotation in the beginning were that hackers were pioneers, thinkers, achievers and great motivators. Over time, the meaning has been mutated and engineered by the media to mean `malicious' and `conniving' thieves/criminals.

To this day, I still stick to the original definition of a `hacker'. I don't give a two fuck about what the media likes to call it.

1 comments

There was a term from the early 00's for malicious "hackers", which was crackers.

Yes, it doesn't have the same ring to it so I understand why the media didn't latch on to it.

But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word? "Hack" was never a good term to begin with, originating from the model railroad club at MIT.

> There was a term from the early 00's for malicious "hackers", which was crackers.

Yes.

> But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word?

Not sure how that will pan out :-)

> But if the media is unwilling to budge should we just make a new word? "Hack" was never a good term to begin with, originating from the model railroad club at MIT.

Well, one of my colleagues and I aspire to become techno-mages.

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjToVZTqCbw

"In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...