You know I like to share little stories and texts about the Hacker philosophy, understood not as the movement we all know related to computer security and reverse engineering, but as a way of thinking.
Remember that the Hacker movement originates by identifying people with a special type of personality, based on creation, a passion for learning, and a clear attraction to difficult challenges. That is, a certain attitude towards life.
Logically, many current Hackers are attracted to electronics and computers, and that’s where this movement comes from. But the Hacker movement is not focused exclusively on the field of computing.
On the contrary, there are Hackers in many fields, from art to cooking. In fact, Hackers existed long before computers, not even engineering (or at least, as we know it now).
Today I want to share a fragment of the text “How To Become A Hacker”, written by Eric Steven Raymond in 2001, translated into multiple languages, including Spanish by Miquel Vidal.
Here is the link to the original text from 2001 by Eric S. Raymond and the link to the translated text by Miquel Vidal from which this fragment is extracted.
The Hacker Attitude
Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual assistance. To be accepted as a hacker, you must behave as if you have this attitude inside you. And to behave as if you have this attitude, you must truly believe in that attitude.
But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes only as a way to gain acceptance in this culture, you are mistaken. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for you—to help you learn and stay motivated. As in all creative arts, the most effective way to become a master is to imitate the mindset of the masters—not just intellectually, but emotionally.
Or as the following modern Zen poem says:
To follow the path: look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.
So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following until you believe what you are saying:
The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved
Being a hacker is a lot of fun, but it’s the kind of fun that requires a lot of effort. Effort requires motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical pleasure that comes from working their bodies, pushing themselves beyond their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you must feel a primitive thrill when solving problems, honing your skills, and exercising your intelligence.
If you are not the kind of person who is naturally inclined towards these things, you will need to be able to experience them to become a hacker. Otherwise, you will find that your energy for “hacking” will be drained by other distractions like sex, money, or social approval.
You must also develop a certain kind of faith in your own learning ability—the belief that, even though you may not know everything you need to solve a problem, if you take a part of it and learn from there, you will learn enough to solve the next part, and so on, until you have it completely solved.
No problem should ever have to be solved twice
Creative brains are a valuable and limited resource. They should not be wasted reinventing the wheel when there are so many new and fascinating problems waiting out there.
To behave like a hacker, you must believe that the thinking time of other hackers is precious—so much so that it is almost a moral obligation for you to share information, solve problems, and then present the solution so that other hackers can solve new problems, instead of perpetually facing old ones.
You don’t have to think you are obligated to give away all your creative product, although those hackers who do so are the ones who get the most respect from other hackers. It is consistent with hacker values to sell yourself enough to pay for food, rent, and computers. It is also fine to use these hacking skills to support a family, or even get rich, as long as you do not forget your loyalty to your art and your fellow hackers while doing so.
Boredom and drudgery are pernicious
Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be subjected to stupidly repetitive work, because when this happens it means they are not doing the only thing they are capable of: solving new problems. This waste of talent harms everyone. Therefore, routine, repetitive, and boring tasks are not only unpleasant but intrinsically evil.
To behave like a hacker, you must believe this enough to automate routine tasks as much as possible, not only for yourself but for the benefit of everyone else (especially other hackers).
There is an apparent exception to this rule. Hackers sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer, but they are an exercise to achieve mental clarity or to acquire a certain skill or obtain a certain kind of experience that could not be gained otherwise. But this is a choice—no thinking being should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.
Freedom is good
Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can force you to stop solving that problem that fascinates you—and, given the way authoritarian minds work, they will find some horribly stupid reason to do so. Therefore, the authoritarian attitude must be fought wherever it is found, because if left unchecked it will suffocate you and other hackers.
This is not the same as fighting all authority. Children need guidance, and criminals need restrictions. A hacker may agree to accept some kind of authority to get something they want more than the time spent following orders. But this is a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of submission authoritarians want is not on offer.
Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information sharing—they only like cooperation they have under their control. So, to behave like a hacker, you must develop an instinctive hostility towards censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or fraud to subdue responsible adults. And you must be prepared to act accordingly.
Attitude is no substitute for competence
To be a hacker, you must develop some of these attitudes. But having only the attitude will not make you a hacker, just as it will not make you a champion athlete or a rock star. To become a hacker you need intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work.
Therefore, you must learn to distrust attitude and respect competence in all its forms. No hacker likes to waste time with those who adopt the hacker pose, but they revere competence—especially competence in hacking, but competence in any field is fine. Especially good is competence in demanding skills that few people master, and best is competence in demanding skills that require mental acuity, skill, and concentration.
If you respect competence, you will enjoy developing it in yourself—hard work and dedication will become a kind of intense game, not a chore. That attitude is vital to becoming a hacker.
Style Issues
Again, to be a hacker, you must develop the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you are away from the computer that can help you. These things are not a substitute for the actual activity of hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that in some primitive way they connect with the essence of the hacking activity.
- Learn to write well in your native language. Despite the stereotype that programmers can’t write, a surprising number of hackers (including the best I know) are competent writers.
- Read science fiction. Go to science fiction meetings (it’s a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers).
- Study Zen, and/or practice martial arts. (The mental discipline is similar in both.)
- Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play a musical instrument properly, or to sing.
- Develop a penchant for puns and wordplay.
The more of these things you have done, the more likely you are to have natural hacker material. Why these particular things and not others is not entirely clear, but they are all connected with a mix of your left and right brain skills, which seems to be an important thing; hackers need to be capable of both logical reasoning and taking leaps outside the apparent logic of a problem at a given moment.
Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. For true hackers, the difference between “play,” “work,” “science,” and “art” tends to disappear, or merge into a high level of creativity.
Also, don’t be content with having a narrow range of skills. Although most hackers describe themselves as programmers, they are often more than competent in various activities—system administration, web design, and fixing hardware problems are common.
A hacker who, on one hand, is a system administrator, on the other hand is also skilled in script programming and web design. Hackers don’t do things halfway; if they dive into a subject, they tend to be very good at it.
