Hacking
All of the modern
meanings seem to be rooted in its widespread use as
slang throughout the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), starting in the 1960s. There, the
original meaning of "hack" was a quick, elaborate
and/or bodged solution students devised for
technical obstacle; it was used with hacker,
meaning one who discovers and implements a hack. The
word itself comes from the German word meaning
"someone who makes furniture with an axe",
implying a lack of finesse in a "hack"; it is
believed by many in the hacking community that the
reason for this is because programs too large to run
on the limited computer resources of the time had
portions "chopped" or "hacked" out in order to be
reduced to a more reasonable size.
Over time, the
meaning of the word there was expanded, perhaps
through contact with the amateur radio community. It
came to mean either a kludge, or the opposite of a
kludge, as in a clever or elegant solution to a
difficult problem. In the term "hack value" it also
acquired a meaning of anything that was
simultaneously fun and clever.
The initial hacker
community at MIT, particularly those associated with
the Tech Model Railroad Club, applied this
pre-existing local slang to computer programming,
producing the variant which first came into common
use outside MIT.
|
