Can any programmer be a hacker?

Hacker" and "programmer" are 2 terms that are somehow obsolete in the real world as because the problems that need to be solved are more complex there is a need for specialization in order for the traditional operations to be conducted with success.

Getting to the point it is down to the skills and ability to shift focus of the one in question if you are seeking an answer. I would say the correct answer is NO, not any programmer can become a hacker, from a logical point of view.

Let's imagine 2 diagrams of skills, one with the skills a programmer need to perform the basic duty and one with the skills a hacker needs to perform his basic duty.

Hacker:

• basic understand of software vulnerabilities
• basic understanding of networking
• basic understanding of legal issues

Programmer:

• basic understanding of server - side workings and of one language (php, python, ruby, go-lang, etc)
• basic understanding of database language and server-database communication
• markup language

Maybe I cut a corner or two going so minimal, my final point would be that a senior programmer can be a hacker as with seniority it grows the responsibility, but at the same time I believe it would be a mistake to consider that the one that shifted can be considered a senior hacker, he would not start from the bottom as he has nurtured some of the common skills.

As for the university level, I would say you are too quick to judge, you are neither a programmer nor a hacker at that level.

From my class at the university some of my colleagues are white hackers as we also had classes on security, some of them are programmers and some of them are devops, but most of them wear all of the hats and I wore as many as I needed for the tasks at hand, which is not ideal, but real life is about that.