The word hacker seems to have been hijacked by the media and turned into something bad. In actuality, there are people who identify as hackers who are not out to rob and break systems. These are the real hackers, and in my eyes they are the heroes of the IT and related industries. I mean the kind of talented people who made the foundation for the modern web, and developed technologies and standards we take for granted today. A good example: Linus Torvalds, best known for the Linux kernel. More devices use the Linux kernel than yplou could possibly imagine. It is everywhere, including in GPS devices. I do believe that the BeamNG team has some people in it with this kind of attitude and talent as I can not image any other way it could have worked. This thread may seem more software related but remember that its the same attitude and talent that allowed the advancements in hardware tech we use today. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
White, Grey, Black and Script kiddys. These are the 4 major definitions of Hackers. White: White hackers are usually paid professionals (but can be voluntary) to find security flaws in software. There are several company's dedicated to this out there. Grey: These are you private individuals who do 1 of 2 things. They are like White hackers but when they discover this flaw they either give it directly to the company privately or they will publicly put this out to the public. Most don't abuse the flaws they find or if they do then see below. Black: These are what people think of proper hackers. Paid by other company's and or governments to infiltrate computer software of major corporation's and or governments. They could also be individual who seek to abuse the flaws they find such as: Credit card info, Money from bank accounts, Shutting down sites by causing the servers to overheat ect. Now Script kiddys are NOT true hackers but they are the most common and saddest things. They Clam to be "hackors" by showing off some script they downloaded from the internet. They are mostly harmless but some lower end Black hackers and disguise themselves as Script kiddys. To finish off before some of you say "BUT HACKERS MAKE THEIR OWN SCRIPPSETJWEAASFJHIUSDHUI" yes this is 100% true but I'm giving my personal oversimplification of the 3 true hackers and Script kiddys from what I have read over the years.
lol, there isn't a moderately advanced code monkey on the planet who doesn't Russia style copy-paste someone else's already very efficient code if they can do it. If it works, why re-invent the wheel? It's why IDE's give you libraries in the first place. It's pretty much how I code. I'll use someone else's and tailor it to my needs :L.
Also my computer skills are way below a "moderately advanced code monkey" if this reply is trying to disprove my comment. If not then my lacking computer skills are causing me to be confused.
It's my profession these days. The amount of original code I've written at my job is quite small, even in my own hobby projects. I'd rather use someone else's better solution (and I do). My colleagues are also cut-paste happy or will research other code before making a solution. It seems to be the way of coding, at least in the job I'm in.
As long as you are respecting the wishes of those whose code you're using, there is nothing wrong with doing that.
