d machines, noticed that his graduate students would loiter around the IBM 704 computer, trying to get the most out of the fewest instructions. They would keep refining the instructions to get them to fit on the fewest cards possible:
Shaving off an instruction or two was almost an obsession with them. McCarthy compared these students to ski bums. They got the same kind of primal thrill from ômaximizing codeö as fanatic skiers got from swooshing frantically down a hill. So the practice of taking a computer program and trying to cut off instructions without affecting the outcome came to be called ôprogram bumming,ö and you would often hear people mumbling things like ôMaybe I can bum a few instructions out and get the octal correction card loader down to three cards instead of fourö (Levy 12).
Hackers are offended by comparisons with irresponsible computer jockeys who break into computers and destroy valuable data or pull juvenile pranks; those destructive cranks are referred to as ôcrackers,ö not ôhackersö by those in the know. In fact, there is an entire unique vocabulary used by hackers that differentiates such terms. ôGronk out,ö for example, is one of hundreds of colorful hacker terms and means ôto cease functioning,ö or when referring to people, it means ôto go home and go to sleep,ö as in ôI guess IÆll gronk out now; see you all tomorrowö (ôHacker Dictionaryö).
There are several types of hackers. ôGurusö and ôwizardsö have the highest level of skill, beyond that of typical hackers. Wizards are generally considered to be expert at doing what other hackers do, but more elegantly and; gurus are wizards that can not only do so elegantly but teach others that do not know how, sometimes considered to have broader knowledge than wizards, who are sometimes thought to have a somewhat narrower and more specialized field of expertise (ôHackerö). ôBlack hat hackersö are malicious, or criminal ha...