Like the term "artist," the meaning
carried tribal overtones. To describe a fellow
programmer as hacker was a sign of respect. To describe
oneself as a hacker was a sign of immense personal
confidence. Either way, the original looseness of the
computer-hacker appellation diminished as computers
became more common.
As the definition tightened, "computer" hacking
acquired additional semantic overtones. To be a hacker,
a person had to do more than write interesting
software; a person had to belong to the hacker
"culture" and honor its traditions the same way a
medieval wine maker might pledge membership to a
vintners' guild. The social structure wasn't as rigidly
outlined as that of a guild, but hackers at elite
institutions such as MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon
began to speak openly of a "hacker ethic": the
yet-unwritten rules that governed a hacker's day-to-day
behavior. In the 1984 book Hackers, author Steven Levy,
after much research and consultation, codified the
hacker ethic as five core hacker tenets.
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