Ethical and Professional Issues: Reading Responses

I believe that there are two distinct definitions of the word hacker, one that applies to those within the computer science community and one used by those who are not. While, as mentioned in the article “The Word ‘Hacker',” individuals in the programming community generally have a positive outlook on the word “hacker,” while members of the general public have a more sinister understanding of the word. Those not familiar with computer science and with the role programmers or hackers play typically view hackers as only being those who are committing crimes, violating privacy, lack ethics, and are harming our world in the end. While it is certainly true that there are many programmers who use their skills in a detrimental and adverse way, many of those within the technology community aspire to use their hacking to enable our world to be more efficient, secure, and productive. It is often over-looked by the general public that in order to stop a criminal hacker, often times someone m...

I believe that Computer Science cannot be classified as simply an art, engineering, or a science discipline as it contains significant aspects of each. Much like how a musician or artist evolves throughout their career and their work can be identified by a signature or common theme in their pieces, the same can be said about programmers. As someone in computer science practices their craft of coding, they find ways to make their code run more efficiently or in a more secure manor. For example, my sophomore year I took a video game programming class. In our first project we were tasked with creating a simple card game in which our code evaluated which player’s card had a greater value and awarded the winning player with the other card. Later on in the semester we returned to that project and expanded upon it by turning a game of “War” into a much more complicated game of Poker. While I used similar techniques to create both games, my craft of creating a game and user interface grew muc...

Hi, I am Rylan, a senior Economics Major and Computing & Digital Technologies Minor living in Duncan Hall. I transferred to Notre Dame prior to my sophomore year here as a part of the Holy Cross-Notre Dame Gateway Program. Our group of 20 students were only the second to be accepted into that new arrangement where we were guaranteed acceptance as a transfer if, as a freshman, we achieved a certain grade point average in our classes both at Holy Cross and at Notre Dame. It was a stressful, but rewarding, year and I am so glad I persisted. The friends that I have made and the experiences I have been through thus far have been amazing.   I am from Lake Forest, Illinois, north of Chicago where I spend most of my free time playing golf or running, and following the World Champion Chicago Cubs. Throughout my childhood, I grew up loving numbers and statistics, calculating distances, analyzing relationships, thinking about how things work, and I always knew I wanted to do something ...