I always found hacking fascinating, an untapped opportunity that can drive our technology further. I am glad that this article addresses in a more comprehensive way all aspects of hacking, their venues, approaches, and tools. Hopefully it can bring some of this experience back to academia and industry.

Posted on 8/5/08 9:37 PM.

I believe the author is correct in advocating for a greater "hacking" content in the traditional software engineering curriculum. Today, we are surrounded by increasingly complex and sophisticated software systems, systems that are developed and maintained by armies of software engineers. While each of these engineers requires a solid understanding of the "developer" curriculum described in this paper, it is arguably even more important that each engineer be an expert in the "hacker" skills -- troubleshooting, reasoning through complex interactions to uncover root causes, second guess existing code, etc. Further, new college graduates without much "hacker" expertise are at a disadvantage in many software companies because such graduates typically spend the first year or two at the company fixing/modifying existing features rather than developing new ones.

Posted on 8/6/08 5:49 AM.