The word "hacker"

[Craig E. Ward]

From sources I have, "to hack," "a hack" and "hacker" come to us from the
literary world. A hack writer was one who wrote "quick-and-dirty" material
for pulp magazines and such, usually being paid by the word.

"A hack, or workaday riding horse is a b/f from the syn hackney, whence
hackney (carriage) and hackney, a drudge, now hack, a literary drudge...
The derivative 'to hackney' orig meant to use a horse for common purposes."*

"But a style can be hackneyed and if it is, it is just as worn out as the
broken down hackney horse of earlier days that gave it its name. Now clip
off the end of the word hackney and you have the literary hack who does the
commonplace jobs that the old hackney horses used to do, thereby showing one
way words are made."**

When correcting people in the print and visual media, it should help a lot to
relate the word to things close to their own. Then explain how much better a
word "cracker" would be for people that break into computer systems by
linking it to "safe cracker." (But don't mention saltines or white people.)

*Partridge, Eric. _Origins, A Short His Etymological Dictionary of Modern
English_. New York: Greenwich House. 1983. p. 275.

**Funk, Wilfred, Litt. D. _Word Origins and their Romantic Stories_. New
York: Bell Publishing Company. 1950. p. 24
--
Craig E. Ward <c...@venera.isi.edu> Slogan: "nemo me impune lacessit"
USPS: USC Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1100
Marina del Rey, CA 90292

[Martin Taylor]

Umm, actually the term 'hacker' originally meant _anyone_ with an
inquisative (sp?) mind... People could hack before programmers existed in
numbers. i.e. the MIT Model Railroad Club, lock-pickers (hacking locks),
etc...

David L. Newton | uunet!marque!carroll1!dnewton

================
Um...no. A Hacker was someone who did a quick and dirty job of work
rather than a clean professional-looking one (he hacked it up). With
early assembler (and pre-assembler) programming, I guess there wasn't
much choice about how you did the work (unless you were a genius), so
"hacker" came to be associated with those who (seemingly clever) programmed
these (incredibly complicated) machines called computers, more than
those who built (for example) rough furniture.
--
Martin Taylor (m...@zorac.dciem.dnd.ca ...!uunet!dciem!mmt) (416) 635-2048
If the universe transcends formal methods, it might be interesting.
(Steven Ryan).