From wiki: "The word 'hacker' derives from the seventeenth-century word of a 'lusty laborer' who harvested fields by dogged and rough swings of his hoe."

Isn't it fun when meaning shifts over time?

I remember hearing old school guys refer to themselves as hackers for years and my thought was whoa, so you fucks were pentesting in the 70s? Holy shit.

... turns out their usage of the word differs from my understanding of it. And to be honest, I've read so many definitions of the term since I have no fucking idea what an 'actual' hacker even is anymore.

So a 'hack' is supposedly a clever yet unorthodox solution? I always used it to mean 'I pulled some shit from my fucking ass and now it works', that is to say, this is a somewhat shabby and arcane way to get the job done but I have not found a viable alternative, or at least not one that makes any more sense when read through the lens of conventional logic.

Perhaps both meanings apply, in their own way.

One things for sure: I'd rather refer to my 'clever' bits of code as black magic rather than hacking -- but *just* to be silly about it.