From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!eagle!cw
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Is "Hacker" Good?
Article-I.D.: eagle.332
Posted: Sat Jun 5 18:36:51 1982
Received: Sun Jun  6 00:49:19 1982



I have never thought that "hacker" was a pleasant term.  Would you, for
example, want a carpenter to work on your house who was described
as a "hacker"?  As far as I can tell, "hacker"'s program with axes.
There are two mitigations, however.
   1.  Many hackers have considerable (if disorganized) knowledge and
       can be a help with difficult problems because they have been
       through the problem themselves.  However, they very often specify
       local fixes rather than globab corrections, so that you have to
       evaluate their help carefully.
   2.  Many good computer scientists describe themselves as "hacker"'s
       as a way of being modest.  Without going into psychoanalytic
       space, I always try to judge a self-proclaimed hacker's skills
       for myself.

Finally, has anyone else noticed that hacker's spend their undergraduate
years in the computer center, get terrific jobs for 3 years, and then
burn out?  This is a statement of averages, of course, but it seems to
be a pattern.

Charles