I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a 'hacker' • Hacker News Board

Re: I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a 'hacker'

#51

Post by ddingus » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

AndrewDucker wrote: post #34

sigmaprimus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the whole idea sounds like a progressive attack by the word police looking for another target to cancel. A not so long time ago there were these thick stacks of paper bound in twine, glue and leather called dictionaries that contained words and their understood meanings and it made it far more difficult to change a words meaning, it seems as with everything in this modern world the time for a meaning to be chang…

What's particularly funny here is that the "has fun making computers do things" definition of hacker predates the "breaking into things" definition. What you're referring to was called a "cracker"until the 90s.

Exactly right.

Re: I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a 'hacker'

#52

Post by watwut » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

axelroze wrote: post #48

watwut wrote: post #31

IRL, I have heard the term hacker only as a term for "badly written code that kinda works, but is a mess". It was never something positive.

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 explora…

> 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.

Re: I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a 'hacker'

#53

Post by ddingus » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

sigmaprimus wrote: post #27

ddingus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a shame really.

Yes, the whole idea sounds like a progressive attack by the word police looking for another target to cancel. A not so long time ago there were these thick stacks of paper bound in twine, glue and leather called dictionaries that contained words and their understood meanings and it made it far more difficult to change a words meaning, it seems as with everything in this modern world the time for a meaning to be chang…

You know if I were you, I would take the labeling and blaming out of this, and just recognize that there is a sort of attack going on.

Many of us you came up during a far less authoritarian, and somewhat simpler time, definitely feel it.

And I think that is a discussion worth having, but I don't think it's one that we should further politicize.