The word hacker has undergone a transformation over the last ten years however many people still misunderstand the term. When I came back from AngelHack, an awesome Hackathon in Silicon Valley a few people said, “I didn’t know you were into computer hacking.” To which I would then explain that the term hacker has gone from meaning a cyber-criminal to now meaning someone who is great at coding. Still if you haven’t been to a hackathon, you might not understand who the modern day hacker is.
A hackathon is an event where hackers (and sometimes designers and business people) get together to do something incredibly cool in a weekend. What they come up with is their “hack” and that’s really why they are called hackers. TechCrunch recently followed one of the “hackers” at their Hackathon at Disrupt for 24 hours. So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a hacker in 2012, this should sum it up.
