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What Is the Purpose of Hacking?

1 points by Alex5899 ↗ HN
Besides hackers being portraited as the digital representation of cat-and-mouse-game or genius-nerdy puzzle solvers by Hollywood, what are the purposes of hacking or learning to hack? I'm like the cybersecurity, IT-related subjects, and love technology, but hacking is something that has always been kind of a greyline for me...can I ask why everyone enjoy/performs hacking?

3 comments

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[dead] codevark
The beauty of the solution, made by you, in the time it takes, that solves the problem. Why does a woodworker chisel and file for days? Why does a brewer experiment with different recipes? Why does a religious philosopher question her own existence?

If you're not hacking, you're just part of the problem.

Spoiled_toast
The purpose of hacking is to gain an understanding of a thing to otherwise manipulate it into doing something it was not designed to do.

Say you have a toaster. This toaster only cooks breads one way. One day you decide you want that toaster to toast bread another way. The rest is up to you.

prosaic-hacker
Note my screen name. I have been doing, learning, and teaching system admin and programming for a very long time. It has always been by Hacking. It does have another description in my mind : Learning by trying things out. This has nothing to do with malicious actions. It has to do with the tactile feel of doing something to consolidate learning.

I have a hobby of playing with breadboard electronics. Hacking at it has given me much more practical understand than any EE equation. Math is not the Limiting issue. Doing it made it real.

A blogger suggested picking a skill that has nothing to do with your core interests. I learned crocheting in a week by hacking and getting expert advise from my 86 year old Mom. Yes I created 4 of the most ugly swatches imaginable but the last one looked almost acceptable for newbie.

Hacking can be applied to any learning process.