Categories of hacker .1 Hacker: Highly skilled programmer

Tweet

1 Categories of hacker 1.1 Hacker: Highly skilled programmer 1.2 Hacker: Computer and network security expert 1.3 Hacker: Hardware modifier The hacker community, the set of people who would describe themselves as hackers or described by others as hackers, falls into at least three partially overlapping categories. Sometimes alternate terms such as "cracker" are used in an attempt to more exactly distinguish which category of hacker is intended, or when attempting to put a contextual distance between the categories due to the Hacker definition controversy. Hacker: Highly skilled programmer This mainly positive usage of hacker refers to one who knows a (sometimes specified) set of programming interfaces well enough to program rapidly and expertly. This type of hacker is well-respected (although the term still carries some of the meaning of hack), and is capable of developing programs without adequate planning or where pre-planning is difficult or impossible to achieve. This situation gives freedom and the ability to be creative against a methodical and 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 has been observed many individuals, including noted psychologist Phillip Zimbardo[1]. Some researches have speculated on a possible link between hacking and conditions in the Autism spectrum, such as Asperger's Syndrome[2]; for example, Bram Cohen, the hacker who created the Bittorrent protocol, is believed by many (including himself) to have Asperger's[3]. While such social stunting from whatever cause is not universal amoung hackers, nor even only restricted to hackers, the difficulty in relating to others and the often abrasive personalities of some hackers makes some of them difficult to work with or to organize into teams.[4] On the other hand, it is not uncommon for hackers to thrive on social interaction