Hacking is the art of discovering new uses for old tools.
I was first introduced to hacking a lifetime ago as a young Lance Corporal in the Marines. Actually, working on a farm as a kid was really my first introduction. But that doesn't really count because hacking is just the way you do things on the farm. So back to the story...
I was an 18 year old boy who just graduated bootcamp and went on to complete training for my military occupation specialty (MOS). I was an 1171 which is now called "Water Support Technician". When I joined, it went by the much less glamorous "Hygiene Equipment Operator". During training, I showed some apptitude for logic so I was lucky enough to be sent to a unit that repairs equipment rather than operate equipment.
It quickly became obvious to me that there were 2 entirely different ways to fix gear.
- The Garrison Way - This is the "correct" way to fix things. You follow the book and troubleshoot the gear based on a detailed flow chart. If you try and start an engine that spews white smoke, you move on to the next step until you've reached the end of the process and figure out which part if faulty. Then you fill out the proper paperwork to order the parts. Once parts arrive, you install them and put the gear back into service.
- The Field Way - If a piece of gear is not operating correctly, do whatever it takes to make it work as quickly as possible using whatever you have at your disposal.
I was always partial to the Field Way of fixing things. If I saw a problem that could be fixed with duct tape and a wire in 10 minutes, I found it insanely annoying being forced to spend weeks going through the formal process. If you think about all of the cost factors involved in doing things the formal way (parts, labor, paperwork) the difference could be tens of thousands of dollars for a future solution that isn't any better than a today hack.
Writing code is very similar in so many ways. There is an academic way of doing things and a scrappy way of doing things. The academic approach is a risk-averse way of writing software. You spend the majority of your time creating guardrails to prevent your code from doing anything unexpected.
The scrappy approach is about solving the problem at hand as quickly and cheaply as possible using unelegant solutions.
There is a time and place for both approaches. But this particular corner of the internet is dedicated to hacks.