Thanks for sharing my blog post! :)<p>I think something I would have included that I thought about later is being curiosity driven. It's more personal, but I've found a lot of what I've really enjoyed (and where I've learned the most) has been from allowing myself to go down random rabbit holes to play with different things.<p>There's some risk to this if you never go deep enough, but I think the benefits are worth it.<p>I think there's also something to PG's essay about liking debugging specifically too.
A lot of hacking is done simply because public and private databases and systems just aren't good enough to serve those that they were made to serve. This made me a "hacker," in that I created programs, crawlers and spiders to find and put together the information I needed for my everyday work as a teacher (all legal, of course, though highly unconventional).<p>I once told my boss about one such idea I had, that I thought would be beneficial to the rest of my collegues. He told me, "Go to the principal, and word your idea so it sounds like it's his idea, and I'm sure he'll give you the go-ahead for it." I told him straight up, that, "Nah, then I'll rather keep it to myself."
My best advice to any budding hacker would be for them to find a job as unrelated to computers as possible, but which leaves them with enough free time to tinker with whatever currently tickles their fancy.
Interestingly, the initial article [0] is still alive and updated. The most recent addition was about Go. I'm always impressed by how many people do things with this language. It seems to really hit a sweet spot for small to big tools.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a>
A hacker might be the modern independent scholar. You can follow your tech curiosity, self-study and work on your own little projects and be intellectually and creatively rewarded.<p>Start anywhere, any programming tutorial, or any arduino project recipe. Get immersed and always figure out how the stuff really works. You are most likely smart enough to do it.<p>If employment is an issue, well, what you learned from the above should take you at least halfway to a job and probably make your career better.
Sometime last year I was taking a short bus ride home from a local supermarket in Leytonstone (London) when a passenger boarded with a slightly louder American voice. I thought he looked familiar then it hit me - Richard Stallman. I didn't have much time to decide what to do as he was about to get off at the next stop so I left the bus at the same stop and caught up with him. After an introduction and short conversation about Emacs and the Free Software Foundation he drew his sword upon which I kneeled and was dubbed a hacker. That's how it's done.<p>Aw, alright - the sword bit is fictitious but the rest is true. Contact with a deity can confer status.
I'm reposting part of a comment I wrote (and adding to it).<p>My version on how to become a hacker. It's just another reference point.<p>Step 1: Go to <a href="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a><p>Step 1b (bonus): read Hacker News (it actually helped, it also really distracted, the latter part is why it's labeled as <i>bonus</i>)<p>Step 2: Complete Binary and Malware Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit<p>Step 3: Complete Computer and Network Security at the Vrije Universiteit<p>Step 4: Complete Hardware Security at the Vrije Universiteit<p>Step 4b (bonus, I mean, you're there now anyway): Complete Kernel Programming at the Vrije Universiteit<p>Step 5: Go to <a href="https://hackthebox.eu" rel="nofollow">https://hackthebox.eu</a>, hack at least 1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard and -- for good measure -- 1 insane box<p>Congratulations, you are now a hacker in every sense of the word:<p>1. You broke into computer systems.<p>2. You needed to be curious in order to do it.<p>This took me 8 months, personally (60 hours per week). I found it a lot of fun. It could take you a lot less time or more time.<p>-----<p>I'm assuming you already know how to program, if you don't then get the following prerequisite knowledge.<p>Step 1: do CS50 in order to learn programming and learn how to learn programming languages. What I've seen in students is that the first 6 weeks are experienced as more difficult than the last 6 weeks (hint: it's because you start off with C). So don't get discouraged. If this is not you and it is the other way around, I've seen that too (though, I've seen it less. It depends on the default mode of thinking that a person uses).<p>Step 2: do <a href="https://www.nand2tetris.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nand2tetris.org/</a> to understand computer systems and get some assembly under your belt.<p>Step 3: if you feel like this road is too rigid, do a project that you're interested in here. Get it out of your system now, because the above mentioned stuff took me 10 months, personally. Create a computer graphics engine with OpenGL and Java. Yes, you could do C++ but that's complicating things for now. If you really want to though, go ahead, C++ is a fine choice if you're burning with passion.<p>These 3 steps probably take between 4 to 8 months. Some people with a hacker mindset could do this within 2 months, or 1 month even (email me if you did!). Some people that have other stuff going on in their lives will do this in 8+ months. It's all fine.
And don't forget the synchronous communities! All hackers have at some stage had a collection of friends in MSN, IRC, ICQ, XMPP, Slack, Discord, Mattermost -- something where they can regularly collaborate and talk among individuals with relevant interests.<p>Check out your local subreddits, find links to invites and start forming relationships with people you may never meet. Because more often than not, these are the people that will introduce you to concepts, jobs and cool shit you'd never find out on HN, Reddit or blogs.
For me, there is a checklist of ideas one has to grok and then computers connected over a network and talking to one another is comprehensible.<p>I think a lot of the complexity of modern software development is powers that be, entrenching their powerful positions by layering more and more complexity, so that no team of a dozen people can ever hope to compete.<p>There is no attempt to re-factor our current way of doing things to reduce the complexity 10x. We're stuck with multiple OSes, multiple languages, multiple tools for each language, a plethora of frameworks that do the same thing but slightly differently and none of them do anything uniquely excellent, they're different for historical reasons, not pragmatic.<p>Half the web developer jobs are a matter of manually solving SQL <-> user interface problem, specific to a business domain.<p>Why we don't sit down and create protocols/specs for each business domain that span across SQL, UI, security and permissions levels so that each bank doesn't have to hire a team of IT people to do the same thing slightly differently is beyond me - I can only guess it is because nobody in government understands how computers work.<p>We're seeing some reduction in complexity with cloud providers, but it is of the worst kind - it is consolidation combined with vendor lock-in, proprietary software and pay-as-you-go pricing, yikes!
I dont understand what he means when he said<p>"(a good example book for this currently is Designing Data Intensive Applications)."<p>I got this book recently and was planning to read it soon, does he thinks the tools and techniques mentioned in the book are a waste of time, or the opposite?
Somehow reminded me of the original Hacker Test <a href="https://www.elfqrin.com/hackertest.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.elfqrin.com/hackertest.php</a>
looking at the ESR version the updates only go back to 2007, but I thought I originally read it in 1996. Whatever it was, it was very similar. I miss that feeling of finding mysterious text files from the elders of the internet. I used to think the changes in technology killed that feeling, but now I have a hunch that I just got older.
Great post. It's equally refreshing to read an article that uses the word "hacker" appropriately, and not like mass media does (i.e. kid in hoodie with a stickered laptop trying to steal your credit card number).
The author's experience mirrors mine almost exactly, down to being inspired to study computer science by that how-to.<p>And, maybe not coincidentally, I agree with everything in that post.
This is confusing. "Hacker" is a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data. "Software Engineer" is the right approach.
"Hacker Spirit" lol
Their first mistake was taking heed of anything ESR has to say, including his archaic opinion on what hacking is.<p>If it's nothing to do with software or hardware security, then it's not hacking.<p>And yes, this site is itself woefully misnamed.
I don't like this new definition of the word "hacker". I wish people would call builders and tinkerers something else. We have all this strong history with hackers who are the ones that infiltrate systems. And now someone makes an app and he/she is a hacker. Somehow I feel like there's a necessity to feel special and unique. This word is so soft now.
I wrote a comment about a recent article that talks about <i>doing the cybercrimes</i> as non glamorous[0]. Here was my response:<p>(I bring it up because too many people see hacking as glamorous when it often is not, except for the payoff at the end)<p>Like anything, it's usually the payoff that is exciting and glamorous. I know the old hacker mantra: 'boredom and drudgery are evil' hence why we automate everything, but I don't think the mantra holds true for most hackers. The best hackers know that programming essentially works <i>against</i> you when you do it, because there's no instant gratification. You have to constantly bang your head against the wall (even because of simple syntax mistakes that make you feel like a n00b all over again).<p>The payoff is always fantastic though. Whitehat or blackhat, knowing that all that hard work and grunt pays off is a wonderful feeling. I tend to veer towards whitehat stuff though because of the old saying: 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime'.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355084" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355084</a>
If you need to ask How to Become a Hacker, you are not going to be one. It all depends on your personal curiosity, either you have it or you don't.<p>PS: Found 0day on Paypal when I was 12 in the early '00s, never got paid or recognized for it :(