How to Become a Hacker

Why This Document? 

As editor of this article, I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbie’s asking (in effect) "how can I learn to be a wizard hacker?” Oddly enough there don't seem to be any FAQs or Web documents that address this vital question, so here is mine. 

What Is A Hacker?  

The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term `hacker', most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant. There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term `hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.  

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music -- actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too -- and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term `hacker'. There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and breaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end. The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them. If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and  get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.

The Hacker Attitude

Hackers solve problems and build things, and  they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself. And to behave as  though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the attitude. But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes as just a way to gain acceptance in the culture, you'll miss  the point. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for  you -- for helping you learn and keeping you motivated. As with all creative arts, the most effective way to become a master is to imitate the mind-set of masters -- not just intellectually but emotionally as well.  

So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until you believe them:

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. 

Being a hacker is lots of fun, but  it's a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.  If you aren't the kind of person that feels this way naturally, you'll need to become one in order to make it as a hacker. Otherwise you'll find your hacking energy is  sapped by distractions like  sex, money, and social approval.  

(You also have to develop a kind of faith in your own learning capacity -- a belief that even though you may not know all of what you need to solve a problem, if you tackle just a piece of it and learn from that, you'll learn enough to solve the next piece -- and so on, until you're done.)  

2. Nobody should ever have to solve a problem twice. 

Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be wasted  on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating new problems waiting out there. To behave like a hacker, you have to believe that the thinking time of other hackers is precious -- so much so that it's almost a moral duty for you to share information, solve problems and then give the solutions  away just so other hackers  can solve new problems instead of having to perpetually re-address old ones. (You don't have to believe that you're obligated to give all your creative product away, though the hackers that do are the ones that get most respect from other hackers. It's consistent with hacker values to sell enough of it to keep you in food and rent and computers. It's consistent to use your hacking skills to support a family or even get rich, as long as you don't forget you're a hacker while you're doing it.)

3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

Hackers  (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work,  because  when this happens it  means they  aren't doing  what  only they can do  -- solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil. To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else  (especially other hackers). (There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem  repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice -- nobody who can think should ever be forced into boredom.) 

4. Freedom is good. 

Hackers  are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone  who can  give you orders  can stop you from solving whatever problem you're  being fascinated by  -- and, given the  way authoritarian  minds work, will generally find some  appallingly stupid  reason to do  so. So the  authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers. (This isn't the same as fighting all authority. Children  need to be  guided and criminals  restrained. A hacker may agree  to accept  some kinds of authority in order to get something he wants more than the time he spends following orders. But that's a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of personal  surrender  authoritarians want is not on offer.) Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information-sharing -- they only like `cooperation' that they control. So to behave like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or deception  to compel responsible adults. And you have to be willing to act on that belief.

5. Attitude is no substitute for competence. 

To be a hacker, you have to develop some of these attitudes. But copping an attitude alone won't make you a hacker, any more than it will make you a champion athlete or a rock star. Becoming a hacker will take intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work.  Therefore, you have to learn to distrust attitude and respect competence of every kind. Hackers won't let posers waste their time, but they worship competence -- especially competence at hacking, but competence at anything is good. Competence at demanding skills that few can master is especially good, and  competence at demanding  skills that involve mental acuteness, craft, and concentration  is best.  If you revere competence, you'll enjoy developing it in yourself -- the hard work and dedication will become a kind of intense play rather than drudgery. And that's vital to becoming a hacker.

Basic Hacking Skills 

The hacker attitude is vital, but skills are even more vital. Attitude is no substitute for competence, and there's a certain basic toolkit of skills which you have to have before any hacker will dream of calling you one. This toolkit changes slowly over time as technology creates new skills and makes old ones obsolete. For example, it used to include programming in machine language, and didn't until recently involve HTML. But right now it pretty clearly includes the following: 

1. Learn how to program. 

This, of course, is the fundamental hacking skill. If you don't know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is  cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy; it is very powerful and flexible and well suited for large projects. But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even merely a programmer if you only know one language -- you need to learn how to think about programming problems in a general way, independent of any one language. To be a real hacker, you need to have gotten to the point where you can learn a new language in days by relating what's in the manual to what you already know. This means you should learn several very different languages.

If you get into serious programming, you will have to learn C, the core language of Unix (though it's not the one to try learning first thing). Other languages of particular importance to hackers include Perl and LISP. Perl is worth learning for practical reasons; it's very widely used for active web pages and system administration, so that even if you never write Perl you should learn to read it. LISP is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. It's best, actually, to learn all four of these (Python, C, Perl, and LISP). Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each  will educate you in valuable ways.

I can't give complete instructions on how to learn to program here -- it's a complex skill. But I can tell you that books and courses won't do it (many, maybe most of the best hackers are self-taught). What will do it is (a) reading code and (b) writing code.  

Learning to program is like learning to write good natural language. The best way to do it is to read some stuff written by masters of the form, write some things yourself, read a lot more, write a little more, read a lot more, write some more ... and repeat until your writing begins to develop the kind of strength and economy you see in your models. 

Finding good code to read used to be hard, because there were few large programs available in source 

for fledgeling hackers to read and tinker with. This has changed dramatically; open-source software, 

programming tools, and operating systems (all built by hackers) are now widely available. Which brings 

me neatly to our next topic... 

2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it. 

I'm assuming you have a personal computer or can get access to one (these kids today have it so easy). The single most important step any newbie can take towards acquiring hacker skills is to get a copy of Linux or one of the BSD-Unixes,  install it on a personal  machine, and run it. Yes, there  are  other operating systems  in the world besides Unix. But  they're distributed in binary -- you can't read the code, and you can't modify it. Trying to learn to hack on a DOS or Windows machine or under MacOS is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast. Besides, Unix is the operating system of the Internet. While you can learn to use the Internet without knowing Unix, you can't be an  Internet hacker without understanding it. For this  reason, the hacker culture today is pretty strongly Unix-centered. (This wasn't always true, and some old-time hackers aren't happy about it, but the symbiosis between Unix and the Internet has become strong enough that even Microsoft's muscle doesn't seem able to seriously dent it.)  So, bring up a Unix -- I like Linux myself but there are other ways (and yes, you can run both Linux and DOS/Windows on the same machine). Learn it. Run it. Tinker with it. Talk to the Internet with it. Read the code. Modify the code. You'll get better programming tools (including C, Lisp, Python, and Perl) than any Microsoft operating system can dream of, you'll have  fun, and you'll soak up more knowledge than you realize you're learning until you look back on it as a master hacker.