Let me educate you…
Hacker: Highly skilled programmer
The positive usage of hacker is one who knows a (sometimes specified) set of programming interfaces well enough to write software rapidly and expertly. This type of hacker is well-respected, although the term still carries some of the meaning of hack, developing programs without adequate planning. This zugzwang gives freedom and the ability to be creative against methodical careful progress. At their best, hackers can be very productive. The technical downside of hacker productivity is often in maintainability, documentation, and completion. Very talented hackers may become bored with a project once they have figured out all of the hard parts, and be unwilling to finish off the “details”. This attitude can cause friction in environments where other programmers are expected to pick up the half finished work, decipher the structures and ideas, and bullet-proof the code. In other cases, where a hacker is willing to maintain their own code, a company may be unable to find anyone else who is capable or willing to dig through code to maintain the program if the original programmer moves on to a new job.
Additionally, there is sometimes a social downside associated with hacking. The stereotype of a hacker as having gained technical ability at a cost in social ability may have an uncomfortable amount of factual foundation in many individuals. While not universal, nor even restricted to hackers, the obsessive/compulsive nature, difficulty in relating to other individuals, and often abrasive personalities of some hackers makes some of them difficult to work with or to organize into teams. Some within the hacker community have speculated that some mild form of autism might be involved in the case of some hackers. In one more pronounced example of such, Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent, has been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome. However, no formal studies of autistic tendencies in hackers have been done.
Hacker: Hardware modifier
Another type of hacker is one who creates novel hardware modifications. At the most basic end of this spectrum are those who make frequent changes the hardware in their computers using standard components, or make semi-cosmetic themed modifications to the appearance of the machine. This type of Hacker basically modifes his/her computer for performance needs and/or attractiveness. These changes often include adding memory, storage or LED’s and cathode ray tubes for light effects. These people often show off their talents in contests, and many enjoy LAN Parties. At the more advanced end of the hardware hackers are those who modify hardware (not limited to computers) to expand capabilities; this group blurs into the culture of hobbyist inventors and professional electronics engineering. An example of such modification includes the addition of TCP/IP Internet capabilities to a number of vending machines and Coffee makers during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
[size=4] Famous Hackers…[/size]
[ul]
[li]Dan Bernstein — the author of qmail and djbdns, also a mathematician and cryptographer.[/li][li]John Carmack — John Carmack is a widely recognized and influential game programmer. Through his work, he has made significant contributions to the field of 3D computer graphics and his games have sold in the millions. In 1999, Carmack appeared as number 10 in TIME’s list of the 50 most influential people in technology.[/li][li]Bill Gosper[/li][li]Richard Greenblatt[/li][li]Bill Joy — Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and author of many fundamental UNIX utilities.[/li][li]John McCarthy — Inventor of the Lisp programming language. Also coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”.[/li][li]Rob Pike — a software engineer and author. He is best known for his work at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team and was involved in the creation of the Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems.[/li][li]Richard Stallman — Founder of the free software movement and the GNU project, and wrote the early versions of Emacs and gcc.[/li][li]Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie — Ritchie and Thompson created Unix in 1969. Ritchie is also notable for having created the C programming language.[/li][li]Linus Torvalds — Torvalds was a computer science student at the University of Helsinki when he began writing the Linux kernel in 1991.[/li][li]Guido Van Rossum — Creator of the Python programming language.[/li][li]Wietse Venema — best known for writing the Postfix mail system.[/li][li]Larry Wall — The creator of the Perl programming language.[/li][li]Steve Wozniak — The co-founder of Apple Computer got his start making devices for phone phreaking.[/li][li]Bill Gates — Co-Founder of Microsoft, and created the original Microsoft BASIC in just a few weeks. He is currently most famous for having headed the Forbes list of the world’s richest for many years.[/li][/ul]
It’s gotta be skill based.
