in reply to Fighting the denigration of hacking

But let's not call that hacking. Let's call that "bad code". Let's call this "cluelessness" or "junior high school programming".
Let's not hack around in the English language, shall we? One should realize that natural languages are moving targets. New words spring into existances, while other words slowly die off. The meaning of words change all the time. Dictionaries do not define what a word means - they just record its usuage.

Trying to change the meaning of words in the way you propose is like trying to conduct the tides by waving your arms on the beach.

Just accept that certain words have more than one meaning.

Abigail

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Re: Re: Fighting the denigration of hacking
by flyingmoose (Priest) on Feb 07, 2004 at 18:25 UTC

    No, in this case that use is not even recorded -- perhaps my point was not clearly made. In addition, your tone was *not* appreciated.

    "A tennis hack" as mentioned above has the word "hack" modifing the programmer. In the phrase "a programmer hack" does not modify the programmer, the "hack" is a noun and "programmer" modifies "hack".

    Anyhow, in the software case "hack" has three meanings, "bad coding example", "good coding example", and "to break into a system".

    I'm stipulating that "bad coding example" did not come from the tennis origins, nor the software origins, but rather from the perception that what we consider to be "a good hack" is despised by other folks, who do not appreciate cleverness and would prefer martialled order.

    In essense, what I regard as a "good hack" other folks regard as "hacked up code", and these phrases are from the same origin, that of "hacking". I'm saying we have software folks that despise "hacking" in the old school (pre-cracker) sense. They don't like cleverness. They don't like low level code and tweaks. They don't like optomizations. Essentially, they refer to the same denotation of hacking (3) with an opposition connotation.

    Cleverness is good. Boringness is bad. Carry on.

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      "A tennis hack" as mentioned above has the word "hack" modifing the programmer. In the phrase "a programmer hack" does not modify the programmer, the "hack" is a noun and "programmer" modifies "hack".

      I believe this usage predates the MIT-computer use, such as in literature ("Kevin J. Anderson is a hack").

      And if you don't like Abigail's tone, get used to it. She's actually far less of an elitist jerk than many programmers I've run into online :)

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      : () { :|:& };:

      Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

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