When hacking isnt hacking

As more and more international technology companies come to realise the value in the Australian market we are more and more being introduced to some old terminologies being used in a different way, from “Hacker” to “Developer Evangelist” these are terminologies that aren’t what they seem.

The term “Hacking” which achieved pop culture notoriety since the internet boom of the 90s has been around since the early days of technological pioneering and is a term that most will associate to illegal online activities of breaking into accounts or the stealing of account and personal sensitive information.

Gone are the days of the stereotypical views of the youthful hacker type living in a darkened room, scrolling through lines and lines of code trying to lift your life savings from ill gotten account information. Hacking has been rescued in recent years by the likes of Facebook, Google and PayPal and is today commonly used to describe the development of web and mobile developers working for the betterment of the end users usability of open platforms.

Thats not to say that hacking in the traditional sense still doesn’t happen (sadly it still does) but like with anything there is always a good and a bad use or to use a industry term “a white hat” and “a black hat”.

A “White hat hacker” is someone that will develop useful apps/games for people to use without any malicious intent, while a “Black hat hacker” is someone that will develop what will seem like useful apps/games for people to use but will be secretly stealing your information or causing troubles to other users (or worse infecting your computer).

Fear not fellow technology user!

As we start seeing “battlehack”, “hackathon” or “code hack” appear more and more in the days to come think not of  a room full of developers breaking down the walls of society to cause chaos and disorder but instead of a room of developers building opportunities of the future.