[LUAU] Linux-Hackers-onMac

[Clifton Royston]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 08:11:51AM -1000, Tim Newsham wrote:
> >I was under the impression that "hacker" came from "neat hack" used as a 
> >term of approbation for a program, or a method, that achieved superior 
> >results with nothing more than an improved algorithm. Supposed to have 
> >been used at MIT by members of the model train club that got involved in 
> >computer (Stephen Levy, _Hackers_).
> 
> Jargon dictionary says "originally, someone who makes furniture with
> an axe"
> 
> http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
> 
> and then goes on to describe its use in computer culture starting
> at TMRC.

  In the late-'70s, early in my career, it had a (different) dual
meaning.  It already had the "skillful" meaning to the MIT and academic
subcultures, but it still had a pejorative "unprofessional", "lacking
polish" connotation, a la "hack writer", in business and professional
coding circles (i.e. the kind of IBM iron I was working on then.)

  One of my jobs we had an MIT student interning with us for the
summer; I think this would have to be '78.  He did some nice work, and
also added some code to the batch jobs that would make them display a
message to the operator to change tapes.  This was done in a way that
was undocumented, unsupported, and quite dependent on the OS address
mappings.  In other words, while it was a "neat hack", it would also
break with the next OS release and be a real pain for somebody else to
maintain or pull out after he was gone.  Several of the programmers took
to ironically calling him a "real hacker", which summed up both of the
earlier meanings.

  By the '80s, I think the pejorative meaning had pretty much faded
away; as far as I know, it never had the "intruder" meaning until
journalists got hold of it and totally confused it.

  ...

  Of course I gather now you can run Linux on Intel Macs just by
installing Boot Camp, thanks to the clever hackers at Apple.
  -- Clifton

-- 
    Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at iandicomputing.com / cliftonr at lava.net
       President  - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/
 Custom programming, network design, systems and network consulting services