The history of the word "hacker"

The words "hack" and "hacker" started in the same place in English language history, split in meaning to mean horse and a brutal action verb. Curiously, these two words were reunited 2000 years later in the world of silicon chips, code, and programming. According to one of the best English etymological dictionaries available anywhere, the word "hacker", with the sense of evil/good and brilliant computer programmer was born in the halls of the MIT. This fact alone reminds us that culture and words begin in actual places. At that time, to hack code, or hack out code, had a definitely negative connotation.