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First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:51 pm
by ChuckT
According to online users, anything and everything qualifies as a hack these days. Some believe typing on a keyboard is a hack.
I own the book "Hackers" (Heroes Of The Computer Revolution) by Steven Levy.
There are enough online posts or online articles that ask what "Hacker" means to them or what their personal definition means and I owned my first Commodore 64 in 1983 so I was around a little longer than the new generation was; I'm assuming this generation online are mostly kids. I was given the book "Hackers" for Christmas and the gift giver said it was where the term "Hacker" originated from. I'm just a little tired of the definitions I see today qualifying as Hacks. Read about some of the real Hackers. This book is probably the only book that shows where the term "Hacker" came from. I only read the book once but the term "Hacker" seems to have originated with the railroad so if you read the book, please tell me if you have a better idea.
You can find the book on Amazon. The electronic version is cheaper. This book is copyrighted 1984.
http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html
hacker: n.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 6:36 pm
by ElEctric_EyE
When I think of a hacker, I'm remembering a 1983 movie called 'Wargames'. Classic movie there. So this book is not about electronic 'hacking'?
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 6:46 pm
by ChuckT
There is the old version of the book and the new 25 year anniversary edition:
This 25th anniversary edition of Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers -- those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
Levy profiles the imaginative brainiacs who found clever and unorthodox solutions to computer engineering problems. They had a shared sense of values, known as "the hacker ethic," that still thrives today. Hackers captures a seminal period in recent history when underground activities blazed a trail for today's digital world, from MIT students finagling access to clunky computer-card machines to the DIY culture that spawned the Altair and the Apple II.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 9:24 pm
by BigEd
I have Levy's book too!
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:12 am
by Dajgoro
Somewhere along the way hackers become the bad guys in the view of the public. How come the term cracker is unfamiliar to lots of people this days, and when was it first used?
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:48 am
by White Flame
Somewhere along the way hackers become the bad guys in the view of the public. How come the term cracker is unfamiliar to lots of people this days, and when was it first used?
Cracking is a subclass of Hacking, so it's still technically correct though obviously overreaching into the problem you point out.
I do like the very broad definition of hacking as "Making something do what it was never intended to do", which applies to both the physical world and computing.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 8:15 am
by GARTHWILSON
I always thought of hacking as figuring out something, more code than hardware, starting with inadequate information/documentation, whether because the supplier has been out of business for a long time, or no longer supports the product and maybe there aren't even any people at the company anymore who even know what the product is, or, in the illegal case, because you don't have a right to it, etc.. I think of the illegal part as only a small branch of it.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 9:29 am
by BigEd
etymology online
says (amongst
other things):
an MIT student from the late 1960s recalls hack (n.) being used then and there in the general sense of "creative prank,"
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:13 am
by Nightmaretony
Great book. did get to spend the night at one of the legend's apartment mentioned int he book. was hoping to talk tech galore. Nothing of the sort, sadly. Sigh.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 8:22 am
by jonb
I always thought of hacking as figuring out something, more code than hardware, starting with inadequate information/documentation, whether because the supplier has been out of business for a long time, or no longer supports the product and maybe there aren't even any people at the company anymore who even know what the product is, or, in the illegal case, because you don't have a right to it, etc.. I think of the illegal part as only a small branch of it.
I used to think the term was used for programmers who hit the keyboard before designing what they were about to write, and thus ended up with nasty, buggy, spaghetti code. A sort of byword for the non software engineers.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 8:38 am
by GARTHWILSON
Is that to say you still start your programs with pencil & paper? I start on the keyboard, but more and more, it's very structured, even if in assembly. A nice thing about using the DOS/ANSI [Edit: that should say IBM437] character set is that you can put diagrams right in the comments, with smooth lines. My programmer's text editor takes advantage of a high-res monitor (unlike the old 80x32 people usually think of DOS having) and also lets these things be drawn nearly as easily as in CAD. I haven't seen anything as nice written for a GUI.
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 2:53 pm
by BigEd
There's the quick hack, and then there's a hacker like Guy Steele, who is a better programmer than most, but happy to apply the label to himself.
Cheers
Ed
Re: First Use of the Term "Hacker"
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 6:20 pm
by BigDumbDinosaur
Is that to say you still start your programs with pencil & paper? I start on the keyboard, but more and more, it's very structured, even if in assembly.
I do from time-to-time scribble on paper what I'm thinking, especially if I'm trying to see a pattern. Marvelous as they may be, computers aren't as receptive to spontaneous thought as paper, as the mechanics of putting thoughts into a computer can interfere with the thinking.
That said, I don't actually write code on paper. By the time my thoughts have gelled to that level I'm already typing. As for structure, it's everything in any program of any complexity, especially so in assembly language.
A nice thing about using the DOS/ANSI character set is that you can put diagrams right in the comments, with smooth lines. My programmer's text editor takes advantage of a high-res monitor (unlike the old 80x32 people usually think of DOS having) and also lets these things be drawn nearly as easily as in CAD. I haven't seen anything as nice written for a GUI.
Strangely enough, I often use the schematic editor in the EPCB software package for diagramming things like filesystem layouts, data table organization, etc. Speaking of editors, the one in the Kowalski simulator doesn't have the ability to insert ANSI box graphics characters from the keyboard. Most of the diagramming I do in source code is usually ASCII "art" or is via characters that were copied and pasted from sources that allow the entry of such characters.