Teaching Python

[harrismh777]

Chris Angelico wrote:
>> Hacking??
> 1) Tinkering, programming, building furniture with an axe.
>
> 2) Breaking and entering in the electronic world.

Not so much.

In the comp.lang.python community hacking is most easily identified with 
the many one-liners that show up... that is the underlying spirit of 
hacking.

==== block quote from RMS "On Hacking"=======

It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as 
hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is 
playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring 
the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. 
Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".

Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that 
administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For 
instance, when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is, 
restrictions on what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to 
bypass the security, partly so they could use the computers freely, and 
partly just for the sake of cleverness (hacking does not need to be 
useful).

==== / block quote from RMS "On Hacking"=======

You can find the entire article here:

http://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/articles/on-hacking.html&term=hacking&type=norm&case=0


kind regards,
m harris