what is a hack?

a hack is a clever (and usually simple) solution to some problem... not necessarily a good solution, mind you, but often any solution will do...

for example: in programming, when encountering what appears to be a timing problem, an obvious hack is to introduce a wait() statement of some sort is often considered a code hack... this is actually an example of a bad solution as it ignores the the fact that the timing may behave entirely differently on a different system and the wait() statement could then cause a problem instead of solving it...

programming is one of the few places where hacks tend to be frowned on, but there are all kinds of other areas where hacks can be made, such as mind hacks, health hacks, life hacks, etc...

a computer hack, then, would be a clever solution to a computer (not necessarily programming related) problem... figuring out how to make the system boot faster, for example, or how to undelete files with a sector editor, or how to feed continuous serial I/O to a program with a batch file and a null modem cable could all be considered hacks...

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