[axelroze]

Words change their meaning as languages evolve. Nothing unusual. I can share this experience that in a more professional setting hacky code is bad code.

But originally back in the 80s and 90s and even the 2000s a hacker was someone who did something different with their devices just for the sake of it. It was a way of interacting with technology. Finding new uses for technology, finding ways to break it. Pure exploration. From the 2000s with massive expansion of personal computing hacker culture died down. No one wants to be associated with ransomware and silk road. Also cryptocurrencies and all the speculations with them made a huge disservice to the hacker community.

It is not 100% dead tho. There is probably some sort of a community hacklab in the place where you live. Give it a visit (after corona dies down a bit).

[watwut]

> But originally back in the 80s and 90s and even the 2000s a hacker was someone who did something different with their devices just for the sake of it

I am over 40 and it was already not used that way, except few old peple in few small subcultures angrily insisting on everybody else using the term wrong.

But among programmers, "hacking the code" was always negative.