I am a hacker. I do like this word. It is neat and sharp. Unfortunately general population understanding of the word is distorted. The narrow meaning of it, as it is commonly used and promoted by the media, describes a person who breaks into other people’s computers. I am nothing like that.
I am a programmer. Some of our kin claim that it is original and the only true meaning of the word hacker. To distinguish the “true hacker” from evil computer intruders they propose to call these wrongdoers “crackers” or something funny like that. I do not support that opinion. These computer security freaks, as evil as they are, can be considered hackers too.
It is like if the word “knife” would be almost exclusively used by public to describe a weapon. Now cooks and chiefs, frustrated by association with bloody murderers, would argue that the proper name for the weapon should be “dagger”. That neither would solve the problem, nor it is true. Knife is a knife and its purpose is to cut things, regardless of what these things are.
So, who the hell is a hacker? Hacker is obviously a person who does hacks. That is the root of all confusion. Average people are simply unaware of the very existence of this noun. The term hack can be defined as a crafty solution to a technical obstacle. Hacker is just a person who is willing to fiddle with things where other people would just give up and turn to other ways.
I would even argue that not all programmers can be considered hackers. Some programmers if not most of them are just that – skilled professionals. Hacking opportunities for a programmer in the closed source world are extremely limited. When some program does not do whatever you want it to do, your only option most of the time is to write another one from scratch. That may be a solution, but hardly a hack, regardless of how much better the new program is. Until you open the source code very little if any hacking is possible.
So to speak, when language is distorted, it leads to misunderstanding. Misunderstanding leads to frustration. Frustration leads to anger. Anger, as we all know, leads to dead kittens. When I use the word hacker and people are thinking about some criminal, it is very frustrating. My point is, however, all attempts to redefine things represent direct path to dead kittens. I am trying to educate people whenever possible instead, one at a time. I do not believe it would change overall situation one day. I just like to make things right at least around myself.