The main requirements to become a hacker are competence , attitude and styles.
1. Skills
- Learn how to program.It is the fundamental hacking skill. It means you’ll have to learn a programming language. Preferably more than one, you can learn a lot by comparing two languages and look for similarities and differences in the way they handle a situation. But programming is more than writing code.
- Learn to run an operating system. The Hacker community is much Unix/Linux oriented these days. There are several reasons, an important one being that with open-source. Unixes you get the code as well. You can actually read how the operating system is written, you can get to know it well enough to modify if you want to.
Unix / Linux is also very network/internet oriented, learning to understand Unix / Linux will help for the next skill you’ll need to acquire. And it comes with free programming tools. - Learn about data communication and networks
- Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML. Technically, the internet is just a collection of computer networks. But it has become an important communication medium as well, and can be used for many things. Sharing information is one. You’ll need to know how to write HTML to publish on the web.
Designing a web site with a good logical structure and a matching directory structure is also an exercise worth doing to sharpen a skill or two. - If you don’t have functional English, learn it. There is a lot of information on the web or in books, available in English. And apparently English has developed a richer technical vocabulary so that a lot gets lost in translations.
2. Style
Style does not matter as much as competence though. The way of your style is an expression of your own personality and hackers recognize certain personality traits. Apart from intelligence, the ability to learn, concentration, analytical thinking, hackers usually also show signs that they use both hemispheres of the brain, not just the left side, the logical, analytical mind. This will allow there mind to dig the logic of a problems
Here are few activities that show you may have this ability, and can help you to improve it
- Learn to write your native language well.
- Read science fiction.
- Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing. Discover the mathematics of music, and the beauty in the mathematics
- Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.
A few things not to do.
- Don’t use a silly, grandiose user ID or screen name.
- Don’t get in flame wars on Usenet (or anywhere else).
- Don’t call yourself a `cyberpunk’, and don’t waste your time on anybody who does.
- Don’t post or email writing that’s full of spelling errors and bad grammar.
Most of the above mentioned things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material.
3. Attitude
Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. Hacker Attitude has to do with finding pleasure in solving problems and building things, looking for new problems to solve rather than re-invent the wheel time and time again. Hackers are open-minded, towards the problems they want to solve as well as towards the world in general. Hackers avoid boredom and brain-dead repetitive work
Most important is they believe that attitude is no substitute for competence.
To be as a hacker you need to have this kind of attitude in yourself. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for you — for helping you learn and keeping you motivated.
Or, as the following modern Zen poem has it:-
to follow the path,
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.
Style and Attitude are important, but can never be a substitute for competence. Attitude without competence means your posing. Attitude and style are things you develop in time. Hacker skills require intelligence, and hard work.
4. Status
There are some hackers obviously are more well known than other hackers. There is something like status in the hacker community
5. Ethics
With knowledge comes power,and with power comes responsibility.Many books have been written about ethics, many more will be written. I won’t add to that discussion.
Star Wars said it all there are hackers, so there is also the temptation of The Dark Side
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