What is a 'Hacker'?

http://ben.balter.com/2013/02/16/what-is-a-hacker/

by p4bl0 • 13 years ago

41 30 13 years ago

ben.balter.com

p4bl05• 13 years ago

I very much like the paragraph entitled "The Hacker Ethic", because it also perfectly describe academic research, except for the decentralization part, where we still have problems accessing papers published in closed-access journals/conferences. I think it really point out how much this is a problem.

pjmlp• 13 years ago

The word's meaning is so twisted in the media as someone that steals information and breaks into systems, that I doubt society will ever adopt the correct meaning for it.

p4bl05• 13 years ago

I think that to some extent both meanings can co-exists, they're not even entirely incompatible actually. Sure "stealing credit card numbers or disabling public utilities" is not really in the spirit of hacking in the good sense, but breaking into systems or other illegal stuffs can also be hacktivism (think of a Robin Wood analogy to, for instance "stealing" research papers back), and is part of what a hacker in the sense of the linked post may do.

D9u2• 13 years ago

     >breaking into systems or other illegal stuffs can also be hacktivism

I'd refer to anyone who breaks into systms as a "cracker," regardless of their motivations.

brendoncrawford• 13 years ago

The word's meaning has also been twisted by the tech startup crowd to mean "one who glues together a couple API calls to make an MVP".

mwfunk2• 13 years ago

This is true, but it's not just been twisted by the media, it's also been twisted by people like ESR. I would also be really skeptical of anyone who has a more specific definition of hacker than, "a really talented programmer", or "a really talented <something>".

quasque• 13 years ago

Language evolves and changes over time, and words have different connotations to different audiences. There is really no such thing as a 'correct' meaning.

D9u2• 13 years ago

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

One who is capable to understand how a system works and why, and then improve it, and he does it on a regular basis.

jebblue• 13 years ago

I liked this explanation.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

I still understand "hacker" to mean someone who re-tasks something from one use to another. I dont see it as computer specific.

Computer hackers are a subset of that. They access or attack systems via routes that were not designed for them to use and exploit in that way. Coding hackers use existing code and modify it for another purpose. I don't see a coder who starts with a blank page and libraries or APIs as a hacker as such. They are creators, using tool provided for intended purpose.

Too widen it: an art hacker, for example, would take old bits of metal and make a sculpture. An artist starts with a blank page and raw materials. People who fix cars with anything around them in Africa or Cuba too are hackers. Im not sure of the details, but when Apollo whatever number went wrong and they had to help the astronauts get home, that was hacking. People who fit V8 engines to small FWD cars; hackers.

I also think its about targeted expertise, rather than over all expertise. Hackers learn the small part they need to re-task, but don't have over all knowledge. As well as that, I think its about cutting through the surrounding crap. Getting the job done regardless of convention, rules, regulation, and procedure. So, hacking is about how you get the job done.

That is how I see it, but of course in all that is room for debate and many fine lines to argue over.

Ultimately to me, its a universal mentality. Macgyver was an ultimate hacker!!!!

bittired4• 13 years ago

I still understand "hacker" to mean someone who re-tasks something from one use to another. I dont see it as computer specific.

So, if I beat someone with a phone, I'm a hacker?

when Apollo whatever number went wrong

13? Or was Zeus with the Apollo you speak and there were wacky antics with a man in a thick mustache? I think that was "whatever P.I.", but I'm not sure.

I don't see a coder who starts with a blank page and libraries or APIs as a hacker as such.

This I totally agree with you on. Every developer that creates something new is not a hacker. Not long after PG started the site, it became a watering hole for the top minds in development and technology. Then people like me joined (years ago, under different name then), and now it is a more civil form of slashdot mixed with MBA's, lawyers (it seems), and wannabe's. I count myself in the wannabe's group not because I "want to be", but because despite many years in the business, I know I don't pass muster as a "hacker". It's not PG's fault that HN is filled with non-hackers. That is the normal way things devolve with any kind of popular open club. To paraphrase Groucho Marx (because there is apparently no official version of the quote): I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.

popee• 13 years ago

So, if I beat someone with a phone, I'm a hacker?

Only if you beat him with phone you made or with new kung foo style you created.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

"So, if I beat someone with a phone, I'm a hacker?"

LOL, well sort of, yes. Especially if some sort of clever kung fu was used to do so!!! And yes, I thick mustache should be part of the hacker uniform!!!!

I count myself as a hacker. I am not highly talented, but I can get stuff done by utilizing bits and pieces of other's creations, or modifying things to fit or work. But I have that mentality that I can apply to most problems. Im not thinking Scrapheap Challenge. To me, those contestants are great hackers, but in a mechanical subset.

Dont get me wrong, my "definition" is not perfect, its supposed to be a loose general fit. Er, a hack!!!!

Damn. Even my replies are hacks......

I need to go away and have a think about that.

p4bl05• 13 years ago

Remind me a bit of http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html.

bittired4• 13 years ago

This brings up a good question: Is RMS a hacker?

He has made important contributions, and at one point could have been considered so, but what has he created lately that is worthy of the title? Some titles like "doctor" are really indicative of the education, not of being a current practitioner, but "hacker" is not one of those titles.

Maybe someone should create an official overseeing body of hackers like "The U.S. Board of Hackers" and a social organization called "The Hacking Society" to go with it, and I could go to school and come out and in front of my name on all formal letters would thereafter be "Hacker". But, until then, I think he was but isn't.

Dogamondo• 13 years ago

Hah, I was just typing non-parented comment of my own when I glanced down and noticed the parting words of yours. It was to be somewhere along the lines of "Despite Mitnick, Jolie and all the computer-centric epitomes of the term 'hacker', McGyver who we never even saw use a computer, was indeed, the ubiquitous ultimate 'hacker' of 1980's mainstream culture.

urza• 13 years ago

Most importantly being entrepreneur does not make you a hacker.

bittired4• 13 years ago

Somewhat surprisingly, hacking isn’t at all about technology. It’s about community.

It's like a Sociology grad student (in this case, somewhat surprisingly, a Law student) read the following from "How To Become A Hacker" and f'd it up in the process: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

"There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker."

Aha. It's in the credits:

See Eric S. Raymond↩

peter303• 13 years ago

To me a hacker is a type of artist who creates something either software or computer/electronics. (The term "maker" is starting to supplant the hardware side.) We respect cleverness and creativity among fellow hackers. This respect is more important than monetary compensation.

iblaine• 13 years ago

IMHO hacking is doing something you're not supposed to in such a unique way that it is considered clever, skillful and attractive. Increasingly people call themselves hackers by doing something that is trivial, unskilled or uninteresting.

Brute forcing your way into banks to steal credit cards for the sake of leaning how to do it (I may have done that as a kid among other things) is hacking. Doing that to pay rent is where there's a departure. Hacking shouldn't be offensive. Hacking shouldn't be boring. Writing Mario Bros 1.0 in a couple lines of jQuery is boring. Hacking shouldn't be about money. If you're at a startup participating in a hackathon then you're ultimately doing it for money. It isn't hacking.

future_grad• 13 years ago

See Eric S. Raymond

If you put this in the beginning you no longer have to write an article about what a hacker is.

mwfunk2• 13 years ago

I started to agree with you, but only because my brain initially parsed your statement as, "you no longer have the right to write an article about what a hacker is". I would take anything ESR writes about hackers or "hacker culture" (whatever that is) with a grain of salt the size of my clearly-unreliable head.

There's a lot of interesting tidbits and trivia and observations in ESR's hacker dictionary and other writings, but it became really clear to me about 10 years ago that ESR has this reductive wish-fulfillment streak that pretty much invalidates his entire worldview. ESR really, really wants to believe that a hacker is something more than a really talented programmer. He really really wants to believe that hackers have a shared, unified culture that goes back to the dawn of computing, and that this culture agrees on pretty much everything that really matters to him, and that this culture is ultimately the only group that matters where philosophical issues surrounding computing are concerned.

If it wasn't obvious enough, he uses terms like "our tribe" to refer to the culture, and "the elders of our tribe" to refer to the supposed universally-agreed-upon elite of this imaginary meritocracy. Most importantly (and this is where the wish fulfillment part comes in), he really wants to believe that he is one of those elders. For all of his strengths (and he has many- he clearly has a really active intellect), he comes across to me as a really insecure yet conceited and arrogant guy (insecurity and arrogance frequently go together in my experience). He ultimately just wants to believe that there is some vast and old meritocratic subculture of intellectual elites, and that he is at or near the top of that meritocracy.

All you have to do is read through his version of the hacker's dictionary for any entries that attempt to define what a hacker is or what a hacker believes, as opposed to the entries that just document trivia, history, and slang. It's like reading Heinlein- every time he tries to define what an ideal hacker is like, he's obviously describing himself. This goes all the way down to political beliefs. At one time, there was a controversial entry that stated that most or all hackers were libertarians. Guess what ESR was? At some point in the 2000s, he changed it to read that most or all hackers were neoconservatives. This coincided with his own self-identification as a neoconservative. I don't know what it says now, I can't bring myself to look at it.

The "surprised by wealth" essay was what initially soured me on the guy. He was (briefly) very wealthy after VA Linux's IPO in 1999, and he felt compelled to write a big long essay about how rich he was and how it validated everything he'd been saying (http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-o...). This was followed by all sorts of lovely things, like his Bill Gates-as-Hitler artwork that I think is still on his site somewhere, and many many many blowhard outbursts and incidents over the years.

EDIT: typos and a clarification

suppressingfire• 13 years ago

I couldn't stop my self from looking the reference up. It's in the entry on Politics:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/politics.html

He's clearly injecting himself into the "definition" as a type (b).

FWIW, the way back machine indicates it's been like that for a decade: http://web.archive.org/web/20030609145128/http://www.catb.or...

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

I think PG puts the definition of a "hacker" in the best way I have ever read

    To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks 
    into computers. Among programmers it means a good 
    programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To 
    programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most 
    literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what 
    he wants—whether the computer wants to or not.

http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html

dobbsbob• 13 years ago

Nobody remembers the Hacker Manifesto? Hackers choose to hack because it is a way for them to learn, and because they are frustrated and bored by the limitations of standard society and frustrated with how information is controlled. To this day we still have paywalls and out of reach tuition costs for most of the world. Thankfully that's changing because a lot of hackers have propogated throughout industry and universities to free the info. In other ways it's not changing with copyright lawyers going after anybody who jailbreaks a phone or accesses a proprietary vehicle chip without being "authorized".

qwertyboy• 13 years ago

Douglas Adams had a brilliant definition (used originally for "nerd"): a hacker is a person who uses the telephone to talk about telephones.

What is a 'Hacker'?

Related Stories