While I’m a big fan of the whole “maker culture”, I really hate how it’s frequently accompanied by a “hacker mindset”.

Quick prototyping has its place, but just doing things without any thought to quickly get things moving is a major source of problems.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of having a bias for action and quickly getting your hands dirty rather than deliberating for a long time. In fact, this is something I am constantly struggling to be better at. But, doing so should not come at the cost of conscious thought and planning.

To me, that’s the connotation of “hacking” - quickly slapping a patch on to get something to work.

There are definitely situations where hacking something together is the right thing to do, but typically that hack should be replaced by a proper solution. And in any case, hacking should not be your go-to tool.

A hacked together solution may work, but it likely won’t be pretty or robust or durable. And it almost definitely is won’t be maintainable.