Hacking into a system is like hacking your way through a door to steal stuff. Hacking around hardware or software limitations to get what you want is creative and more similar to creating furniture with an axe, you’re doing things the tool was never meant to do, and doing it incrementally until you get the desired result.
Hacking is using something in a manner in which it was unintended by hacking parts of it, as with an axe.
Good discussion of it here with etymological references.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70658/what-does-the-word-hacking-or-hacker-come-from
Exactly!
Hacking into a system is like hacking your way through a door to steal stuff. Hacking around hardware or software limitations to get what you want is creative and more similar to creating furniture with an axe, you’re doing things the tool was never meant to do, and doing it incrementally until you get the desired result.