But 'everyone' wants to be a hacker these days too. Read the top left corner of this website. We fought for a decade to redefine the word in the eyes of the public, and yet its quickly become defined as most any person interested in startup culture.
I agree. I think the generally accepted meaning has evolved over time. Hacker, to most people, now means cracker/intruder.
Perhaps a more positive way to approach this is to popularise a different term for what we mean by hacker (tinkerer, maker). It's not admitting defeat by abandoning the original meaning - it's taking the path of least resistance and evolving with the language.
No. On this site hacker doesn't have any of its original meaning, it means IT-startup entrepreneur. Don't forget that this site was named Startup News before.
The vast majority of people don't think "person interested in startup culture" when they hear the word hacker. In the eyes of the public, a hacker is someone who breaks into websites or writes viruses.
I guess "hacker" doesn't really mean what it used to mean. I thought it used to mean people who are curious and like to tinker. Maybe it now means "busy people who have no time to actually tinker but like the idea of tinkering".
I think it still holds the same connotation (that's in the rare cases where hacker isn't already taken to mean someone who breaks into computers). Which is why I cringed when startup news changed to hacker news.
When I came across Hacker News (recently) I was a bit confused why it appeared to be about startups and not about actual (security) hacking. Then I discovered "hacker" had in essence become a general term for "coder" in the startup community. This usage still doesn't sit well with me, for the reason you point out: it's not about doing something really cool and unexpected any more. When I see people advertising for "Ruby hackers", etc. I just feel like it's almost a parody (except it's not, people are calling themselves that mostly in seriousness). Oh well, I guess language left me behind.
Hacker Hacker Hacker.I am sick of this word. Whats wrong with simple words like techie. There are far more people considering themselves as Hackers nowadays even though they are simply an average engineer. Please stop abusing this word. Was Einstein a Hacker ? How about Leonardo Da Vinci ?
By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B testing. Please stop.
Word "hacker" has become very vague lately, but the definition used 10 years ago, did not include "people who build robots, or the people who built the chips that Unix runs on". Those were called Electric Engineers AFAIR. "Hacker" literally meant a guy involved with cybersecurity and therefore deeply into OS internals. Then the word went through transformation and today may easily mean "an Arduino hacker who made an automated bird feeder", "a RoR hacker who made a homepage with it etc.".
There are many people, such as the OP probably, who take pride in the engineering aspect of what they do. It's my understanding that the term "hacker" as used on HN actually does not include this.
Also, not everybody is working on a startup. Most programmers actually work in the "put money into deeper, lower-level engineering" phase of software development, and it's important that companies have a stream of good engineers to hire.
3-4 years ago when I started programming right out of school, the word Hacker used to have a negative connotation. I always wanted to call myself that but people would say "Hackers are people that just hack things together and cannot build scalable solutions" and programmers are ones that build real solutions. Glad to see that is changing now.
For most people nowadays the word hacker means a guy who pirates stuff and steals your facebook accounts, but the original meaning is just a clever programmer.
The word hacker is so abused for marketing purposes it now means entry level programmer of whatever trendy fad of the times. (e.g. node.js hacker, rails ninja, mongodb god)
* Originally (70s-80s) hackers were programmers/technicians who could
modify programs or machines to perform tasks beyond their original
intended use (for good or bad).
* Afterwards (90s), journalists hyped the word to mean security
hackers, people expert on security issues of software (itself a
subset of original hackers).
* And then further journalist confusion, changing it to refer to
people cracking into systems
* In the last few years it became a glorified buzzword losing any
useful meaning.
A lot of insecure people who need cool names use it to describe themselves. There's no substance and no way to verify their claims. This is like ghetto cars with neon lights and flaps.
Well, words do change with the times. The world hacker once meant the guy with an axe, hacking things.
But it's not like its diluted to the point where it can mean "anything and everything".
Now, the original meaning that the parent laments (something like the historical MIT hackers), has been long gone (as an exclusive meaning).
All through the late eighties - nineties "hacker" in the mass media meant the computer intruder. Like the movie "Hackers" and all. Geeks have tried for years to get them to use "cracker" instead.
Later (circa 1998-2000), it was mostly re-associated with the OSS crowd, Linux, the Mozilla guys, et al.
Nowadays, it seems to mean the developer in general (when used casually) and the more "adventurous" kind of developer --e.g one that dabbles in multiple languages, knows his Lisp etc (when used in a more positive way).
Perhaps the only kind of developers disqualified by the current use of the terms are "corporate drones", Java/Visual Basic guys making tedious enterprise stuff and the like.
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