1. From the MIT Model Railroad Club. This is the "good" definition of hacking. A "hack" is a clever manipulation of an existing system to exceed it's design specs or make it do something radically different from what it was originally intended to do. Example: "Did you see that radical hack Bob pulled, using a the I/O port on a Commodore 64 to drive the model railroad track switcher? That was amazing!"

2. From the news media in the 80s and 90s. To break into a computer system. Example: "Wiley hackers broke into government computers and stole your Social Security, Drivers License and Credit Card numbers. But the good news is you get free credit monitoring services for the next year."

3. From ????. To jury-rig a system out of parts you wouldn't expect would work together, but it does. Example: "Did you see that radical hack Bob pulled, using a cardboard toilet paper roll to emulate a PDP-11? That was amazing!"

The original term comes, afaik, from journalists who would hack on typewriters, hence hacks.. it's another evolution, but I'm not great with etymology.

Instead, he works under Linux with standard Makefiles, using wine and calling the compiler directly.