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Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt
From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: hack
Message-ID: <384@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Sep-83 17:33:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.384
Posted: Thu Sep 15 17:33:50 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Sep-83 20:44:42 EDT
Organization: D.C.I.E.M, Toronto, Canada
Lines: 16

There has been a lot of discussion reaching here in the last couple of
days about the "true" meaning of hacking or hacker. I am surprised at
the possessiveness that computer types have shown about the word. When
(and where) I grew up, one main meaning of "hack" was somebody who was
no better than competent at their profession or art form. It was almost
the converse of "genius". A class of 50 engineers might contain 45 hacks
and 5 good engineers. Similarly, a computer hacker to me was somebody
who wasn't very good at programming, but went about doing it anyway.

I suspect the derivation was from "hacking" a piece of wood when the
job required careful carving, or some such.

When and how did "hacking" come to be tied to computers, and when and
how did the connotation become good rather than bad?

Martin Taylor