Forget everything Hollywood taught you about hackers. The guy in the black hoodie frantically typing in a dark basement? That’s not a hacker—that’s a cracker, and real hackers find them as annoying as you do.
The term “hacker” has been so thoroughly butchered by media sensationalism that most people have no idea what it actually means. Enter Eric S. Raymond’s legendary guide “How to Become a Hacker”—a manifesto that’s been quietly shaping tech culture since 1996.
About This Article: We stumbled across Eric S. Raymond’s brilliant How to Become a Hacker guide and found it so fascinating that we had to break it down and share it with you. This isn’t just another tech article—it’s a deep dive into one of the most influential pieces of writing in computer culture that completely changes how you think about what hackers really are.
The Great Misunderstanding: Hackers vs. Crackers
Raymond cuts straight to the heart of the confusion: “Hackers build things, crackers break them.” It’s that simple, yet the distinction has been lost in decades of sensationalist media coverage.
Real hackers are the people who built the Internet, created Unix, and make the World Wide Web work. They’re not breaking into your bank account—they’re the ones who built the security systems protecting it in the first place.
The hacker community traces its roots back to the early 1960s, emerging from the first time-sharing minicomputers and ARPANET experiments. These weren’t digital vandals; they were brilliant engineers and programmers driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand how things work and make them work better.
The Five Sacred Principles: What Makes a Hacker Tick
Raymond identifies five core beliefs that define the hacker mindset. These aren’t just programming guidelines—they’re a philosophy for approaching problems in any domain:
The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved
True hackers get a genuine thrill from solving problems and exercising their intelligence. It’s not about money or social approval—it’s about the pure joy of figuring things out. As Raymond puts it, if you’re not naturally wired this way, “you’ll need to become one in order to make it as a hacker.”
No problem should ever have to be solved twice
This is where the hacker gift culture comes from. If you solve something interesting, you share the solution so others can tackle new problems instead of reinventing the wheel. It’s almost a moral obligation—other hackers’ thinking time is precious.
Boredom and drudgery are evil
Hackers believe creative people should never be stuck doing repetitive work. If something is boring, automate it. This isn’t laziness—it’s efficiency. Why waste human creativity on tasks a computer could handle?
Freedom is good
Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian because arbitrary authority blocks problem-solving. They need freedom to explore, experiment, and share information. Censorship and secrecy are antithetical to the hacker way.
Attitude is no substitute for competence
Here’s the kicker: you can’t fake being a hacker. The community worships competence and has zero tolerance for posers. You have to actually know what you’re doing.
The Four Pillars of Hacker Skills
Raymond outlines four essential skills every hacker must master:
Learn to Program: Start with Python (Raymond’s current recommendation), then branch out to C, Perl, and LISP. But it’s not about collecting languages—it’s about learning to think algorithmically.
Master Unix/Linux: You can’t be an Internet hacker without understanding Unix. It’s the operating system of the Internet, and unlike closed-source systems, you can actually peek under the hood.
Learn the Web: Master HTML and understand how the Web works. Most hacker innovations happen where they can have visible impact.
Master English: Like it or not, English is the working language of the hacker culture. Linus Torvalds comments his code in English, and there’s a reason for that.
The Gift Economy: How Hackers Keep Score
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Hackerdom operates as what anthropologists call a “gift culture.” You don’t gain status by hoarding resources or dominating others—you gain respect by giving things away.
Raymond identifies five ways to earn hacker respect:
- Write open-source software that others find useful
- Help test and debug existing projects
- Publish useful information and maintain FAQs
- Keep the infrastructure running (the unglamorous but essential work)
- Serve the culture itself (write guides like Raymond’s own)
The beautiful irony? The more you give away, the more respect you earn. It’s capitalism turned inside out.
The Hacker Aesthetic: Work Hard, Play Hard
Real hackers don’t fit the antisocial stereotype. Raymond notes that many accomplished hackers are excellent writers, science fiction fans, martial artists, and musicians. The pattern? They approach everything with the same analytical intensity they bring to code.
The boundaries between work, play, science, and art tend to dissolve for true hackers. Everything becomes “high-level creative playfulness.” They don’t do things by halves—if they invest in a skill, they tend to master it completely.
The Modern Reality: Open Source Changed Everything
When Raymond first wrote his guide in 1996, most hackers worked on closed-source software. The rise of Linux and the open-source movement fundamentally changed the game. Today, “hacker” and “open-source developer” describe essentially the same culture.
This shift happened because open source gave hackers what they’d always wanted: complete freedom to tinker, modify, and share. No more black boxes, no more artificial barriers to understanding how things work.
Why This Matters: Beyond the Code
Raymond’s guide isn’t just about becoming a programmer—it’s about cultivating a particular kind of intellectual honesty and creative problem-solving approach that applies far beyond technology.
The hacker mindset values:
- Curiosity over conformity: Question everything, especially “the way things have always been done”
- Sharing over hoarding: Knowledge grows when distributed
- Competence over credentials: What you can do matters more than what certificates you have
- Automation over repetition: If it’s boring, make a computer do it
- Transparency over secrecy: Open systems are more trustworthy and improvable
The Test: Are You Already a Hacker?
Raymond offers a simple three-question test:
- Do you speak code fluently?
- Do you identify with hacker goals and values?
- Has a well-established hacker ever called you a hacker?
You need all three. Skills alone aren’t enough—you need the mindset. Attitude alone isn’t enough—you need the competence.
The Path Forward: No Shortcuts to Mastery
The sobering truth? There are no shortcuts. Raymond estimates it takes 18 months to two years to acquire respectable skills, and about ten years to achieve mastery. Real hackers spend their entire lives learning and perfecting their craft.
But here’s the beautiful part: if you’re truly wired for this kind of thinking, the learning never feels like work. It becomes “intense play rather than drudgery.”
The Bigger Picture: A Philosophy for the Digital Age
Raymond’s guide, now nearly three decades old, remains startlingly relevant because it captures something fundamental about how creative, technical people think and work in an interconnected world.
In an age of AI, surveillance capitalism, and digital monopolies, the hacker values of openness, sharing, and intellectual freedom become even more crucial. The hackers Raymond describes aren’t just programmers—they’re digital democracy advocates, building the tools and systems that keep information free and accessible.
Ready to join the ranks? The hacker community welcomes anyone genuinely interested in learning and contributing. But remember Raymond’s warning: they have long memories, and they don’t suffer fools gladly. Come prepared to learn, share, and above all, build something worthwhile.
The world is indeed full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. The question is: are you ready to start solving them?
Learn More: How to Become a Hacker | The Cathedral and the Bazaar | Jargon File