From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,26c98aaeafe861d2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-04-02 18:26:17 PST Path: gmd.de!ira.uka.de!yale.edu!think.com!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!news.u.washington.edu!stein2.u.washington.edu!bketcham From: bketcham@stein2.u.washington.edu (Benjamin Ketcham) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is General Kind the harbinger of doom for the Mandate? Date: 3 Apr 1993 02:05:36 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Message-ID: <1pirdgINNs48@shelley.u.washington.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: stein2.u.washington.edu Date: 1993-04-03T02:05:36+00:00 List-Id: Since nobody else has spoken up about this yet, I may as well mention it: The term "hacker" describes a culture of programmers who program for enjoyment, as well as, often, for work. The hacker culture espouses the values of robustness and quality in software, and eschews kluge artistry. The term "hacker" has been imprecisely applied by the media to refer to persons who break security on shared computer systems, and/or write and disseminate software viruses. The true hacker culture has nothing but contempt for these people. A new term has been proposed to describe these security-breakers, to eliminate the current confusion: "spiders". Whether or not this term takes hold, it would be nice if we could preserve the correct usage of the term "hacker". Women and men who call themselves hackers have written some (much) of the highest quality software that exists, and are a driving force behind the evolution of the whole field of software engineering. --ben