The latter pursuits tended to be
solo or small-group activities. Tunnel and phone
hackers relied heavily on campus lore, but the
off-limits nature of their activity discouraged the
open circulation of new discoveries. Computer hackers,
on the other hand, did their work amid a scientific
field biased toward collaboration and the rewarding of
innovation. Hackers and "official" computer scientists
weren't always the best of allies, but in the rapid
evolution of the field, the two species of computer
programmer evolved a cooperative-some might say
symbiotic-relationship.
It is a testament to the original computer hackers'
prodigious skill that later programmers, including
Richard M. Stallman, aspired to wear the same hacker
mantle. By the mid to late 1970s, the term "hacker" had
acquired elite connotations. In a general sense, a
computer hacker was any person who wrote software code
for the sake of writing software code. In the
particular sense, however, it was a testament to
programming skill.
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