The Definition of Word 'Hacker'

Every one of us may often hear this word, hacker, but maybe not all of us exactly know the meaning of this word. Through this article, I want to share a little information about the meaning of the word ‘hacker’. Happy reading.

First, this is the definition of word hacker by Eric Raymond, a computer programmer, author, and open source software advocate, “for me, a hacker is someone who wants to learn, someone who likes to improve, modify, create. It does not really mean someone who breaks into computers and stuff like that (a better name for that would be ‘cracker’ or ‘black hat hacker’)”. Some more definitions below are from http://www.catb.org:

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.

2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.

3. A person capable of appreciating hack value.

4. A person who is good at programming quickly.

5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in ‘a Unix hacker’. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)

6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.

7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

The above information about the definitions of word ‘hacker’ are all the definitions I find while I was searching a movie about hacker through Google. Wish that information is useful for all of us.