The term "hacker" is a translation of the English word "hacker," which originally referred to workers who chopped wood with an axe. Its introduction into the computing world can be traced back to the 1960s. For these individuals, cracking systems or networks was largely a hobby, driven by personal interest rather than for profit or work-related needs.
Brian Harvey, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote about the origins of this term. He noted that students at MIT were typically divided into two groups: "tools," who were the model students and consistently earned top grades; and "hackers," who often skipped classes, slept during lectures, but were full of energy at night and enjoyed extracurricular activities.
What did this have to do with computers? Initially, nothing. However, hackers also had their own hierarchy, similar to how tools were ranked by their grades. Top-tier hackers weren't necessarily those who did nothing all day; instead, they were passionate about pursuing certain special interests, such as studying telephones, railroads (models or real ones), science fiction, radio, or computers. This is how the term "computer hacker" emerged, referring to computer experts.