<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Thomas,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">For what it’s worth.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I worked in engineering for mini-computer maker Systems Engineering Laboratories (later Gould/Computer Systems Division) throughout the 1980’s, basically until the end of the mini-computer era. The term hack never morphed from the original definition in all that time, at least in engineering circles. During that period, a hack was never considered a positive attribute, and was something to be avoided, if at all possible. The term would never be applied to someone’s work when it improved the efficiency or reliabilty of the resulting product. In fact, I still would not use the term in a positive way, when speaking of some aspect of a design. I do understand how much the usage has changed over the years, but in the environment I worked in, a hacker was someone who took shortcuts, and in my experience, those hacks usually resulted in design problems.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You write of MIT students optimizing a design in your paper, which would be considered good solid work, and not a hack in the environment I worked in. This is as long as the changes accounted for all the corner cases and was relatively bug free. However, if the optimization didn’t cover corner cases or had lots of bugs, it would most likely be considered a hack, I.E. not fitting for release to customers.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I guess the point I’m making is that, in popular culture, as you point out in your article, partly through the efforts of Steven Levy and others, the connotations associated with the terms hack and hacker has changed. However, there still is a significant stigma associated with the term, hack, among some engineering professionals (well at least me) that worked through that period. In fact, it’s still hard for me to reconcile the use of the term hacker with the tremendously talented and hard working teams that managed to turn the first microcomputers from a curiosity into what they are, today.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">best regards,</div><div class="">Mike Willegal</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Mar 26, 2021, at 12:00 AM, <<a href="mailto:thomas.haigh@gmail.com" class="">thomas.haigh@gmail.com</a>> <<a href="mailto:thomas.haigh@gmail.com" class="">thomas.haigh@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta charset="UTF-8" class=""><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Hello SIGCIS,<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">CACM just published part two of my trilogy on classic accounts of IT work. This once considers Steven Levy’s 1984 classic_ Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_. It’s called “When Hackers Were Heroes” and is available at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251341-when-hackers-were-heroes/fulltext" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" class="">https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251341-when-hackers-were-heroes/fulltext</a>. The book is the source of the much-quoted “hacker ethic” but it’s richer, stranger, and more deeply rooted in its time than you might expect if all you’ve seen is the bullet point version.<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">The first part focused on Tracy Kidder’s _<i class="">The Soul of a New Machine</i>_ (<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3436249" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" class="">https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3436249</a>) while part 3, due out in the summer, has the working title “Women’s Lives in Code.” It will explore both Ellen Ullman’s wonderful _<i class="">Close the Machine</i>_ and the more recent (but set in roughly the same era) TV series _<i class="">Halt and Catch Fire</i>_. In case you are curious about that show, here’s a preview: you should watch it but probably best to skip the first season which is a misbegotten attempt to make a _<i class="">Mad Men</i>_ derivative based around Jobs and Wozniak archetypes (except they work at what’s basically Compaq and hire a Lisbeth Salander type for gender balance). The show reboots for the second seasons, improves dramatically, and finishes up, as critics have noted, being more like _<i class="">Six Feet Under</i>_ than _<i class="">Mad Men</i>_.<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">While I am here, I should also point out another article of potential interest in the current issue: “Roots of ‘Program’ Revisited” by Lisebeth De Mol and Maarten Bullynck.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251342-roots-of-program-revisited/fulltext" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" class="">https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251342-roots-of-program-revisited/fulltext</a><o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Back in February, CACM published a condensed version of Donald Knuth’s 2014 talk “Let’s Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/2/250078-lets-not-dumb-down-the-history-of-computer-science/fulltext" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" class="">https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/2/250078-lets-not-dumb-down-the-history-of-computer-science/fulltext</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This gave me the feeling of being in a Christopher Nolan movie, as I’d already responded to it in the same venue in 2015, as “The Tears of Donald Knuth.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fulltext" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" class="">https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fulltext</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Six years after the response, the original arrives.<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Best wishes,<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class="">Tom<o:p class=""></o:p></div></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">_______________________________________________</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">This email is relayed from members at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://sigcis.org/" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">sigcis.org</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. 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