Comment 1340 for bug 1

I really enjoyed the last several posts where i had no idea what was being
talked about but it's good to have people with that level of relevant detailed
knowledge contributing to a thread.

When we see the term "hacker" a lot of people still think of the way the
mainstream press and news reports mis-use the term. It is better to realise
that inside the linux community it more usually means something like "clever
coder/programmer". Mostly when programmers write code they are just follow
standard methods and settle into habits, however most programmers have odd
moments when they really grok and have an almost Zen-like "oneness with the
code" producing something so beautifully simple and elegant that other code
looks like a kludge in comparison, even if it was fairly well produced.
Sometimes a hack might be producing a kludge where it wasn't thought possible to
get any result at all. One thing about linux is that elegant code is often
easily carried through into subsequent releases and kludges gradually get
replaced with more elegant code. With Windows programming it is usually
difficult to get any overview of any particular chunk of coding so it often
remains a kludge. In linux elegant code often results in admiration and respect
for the coder. The main thing about "hack" is about producing something very
fast or clever or elegant or outstanding in some other way.

Regards from
Tom :)