in reply to Perl Hacking

Well Hacker is a bit over used these days. There was the more tradition meaning for people trying to break into systems.

But it started getting overused when the movie wargames came out.

To me the term perl hacker is somebody playing with the language. Seeing what it can do and what it can't. In the process improving his skills....

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Re: Re: Perl Hacking
by krisahoch (Deacon) on Jul 19, 2002 at 10:52 UTC

    Wasn't Matthew Broderick a Cracker in wargames? I was told (back in the 80's) that a Cracker was someone that broke into other computer systems illegally; and a Hacker was someone who had the ability to 'program'.

    Consequently, a Hacker could be a Cracker, but that didn't mean that a Cracker could be a Hacker

    Hacker, cracker, smacker, wacker, jacker, lacker, tracker, bracker...more tangent....

    kristofer

[reply]

      By todays definition, yes. However, remember that back then there were no firewalls. You could access a mainframe directly. As it was once explained to me by an old Assembler/Systems guy. Hacker came from hacking the OS which was usually looking for holes to exploit. But it has changed since then. There is an effort to label such people as crackers. So the "real" definition doesnt matter anymore.

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