Slashdot Mirror
Hacking - Art or Science?
An anonymous reader asks: "The argument regarding the principle nature of hacking - be it an art or a science is not a new one. This paper hopes to discuss both the meaning of the term 'hack' and the underlying arguments for it being defined as an art or a science, in reference to the base principles and basic methodologies of the discipline. So in your opinion, is hacking art or science?"
Computer science is the art of automating anything that's been refined to a science.
Hacking is a form of computer science.
Programming, by definition, cannot be hacking.
The term Hacking was coined at the MIT model railroad club and it's absolute definition can be read in, of all things: "Hackers" ISBN: 0141000511 a book about the computer revolution from the inside. A very good and entertaining read I might add.
The original meaning of the word, that was immediatly lost when the media and people who weren't hackers but wanted to be got hold of it, was: To make something do something it wasn't necessarily designed to do.
I believe it came about when one of the MIT engineers, working on a brand new and unbelieveably expensive new computer donated to the school added functionality to the computer by jamming a screwdriver into one of the circuits.
yes