Hacking X for Y

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

Hacking X for Y
 n.

   [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made
   publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR
   record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various
   fields. On display, two of these fields were always combined into a
   project description of the form "Hacking X for Y" (e.g., "Hacking
   perceptrons for Minsky"). This form of description became traditional
   and has since been carried over to other systems with more general
   facilities for self-advertisement (such as Unix {plan file}s).

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

Hacking X for Y

   [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS
   made publicly available about each user.  This information
   (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could
   fill out various fields.  On display, two of these fields were
   always combined into a project description of the form
   "Hacking X for Y" (e.g. ""Hacking perceptrons for Minsky"").
   This form of description became traditional and has since been
   carried over to other systems with more general facilities for
   self-advertisement (such as Unix {plan files}).

   [{Jargon File}]