Science Research Associates undertook to write a full APL system for the IBM 1500.
They modeled their system after APL/360, which had by that time been developed and seen substantial use inside of IBM, using code borrowed from MAT/1500 where possible.
In their documentation, they acknowledge their gratitude to "a number of high school students for their compulsion to bomb the system".
This was an early example of a kind of sportive, but very effective, debugging that was often repeated in the evolution of APL systems.technical experts, skilled, often young, computer programmers who almost whimsically probe the defenses of a computer system, searching out the limits and the possibilities of the machine.
Despite their seemingly subversive role, hackers are a recognized asset in the computer industry, often highly prized.