How To Become A Hacker
Eric Steven Raymond
[1]Thyrsus Enterprises
<[2]
[email protected]>
Copyright © 2001 Eric S. Raymond
Revision History
Revision 1.52 03 Jasnuary 2020 esr
Go makes a place as a plausible learning language, displacing Java.
Revision 1.51 06 October 2017 esr
Link to "Things Every Hacker Once Knew." Mention USB-stick distros.
Many updated translation links.
Revision 1.50 19 July 2015 esr
Added link to "Let's Go Larval".
Revision 1.49 21 November 2014 esr
Added link to "How To Learn Hacking".
Revision 1.48 19 June 2014 esr
freshmeat/freecode is dead, alas.
Revision 1.47 20 May 2014 esr
Fix up various stale links. Join a hackerspace!
Revision 1.46 25 Sep 2013 esr
Add micropatronage explanation and gittip link. Why you should not ask
me for advice on how to get started.
Revision 1.45 12 May 2013 esr
Open Solaris isn't, and Unity screwed the pooch.
Revision 1.44 20 May 2012 esr
Updated the critique of Java.
Revision 1.43 07 Feb 2011 esr
Python passed Perl in popularity in 2010.
Revision 1.42 22 Oct 2010 esr
Added "Historical note".
Revision 1.40 3 Nov 2008 esr
Link fixes.
Revision 1.39 14 Aug 2008 esr
Link fixes.
Revision 1.38 8 Jan 2008 esr
Deprecate Java as a language to learn early.
Revision 1.37 4 Oct 2007 esr
Recommend Ubuntu as a Unix distro for newbies.
__________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
[3]Why This Document?
[4]What Is a Hacker?
[5]The Hacker Attitude
[6]1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be
solved.
[7]2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
[8]3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
[9]4. Freedom is good.
[10]5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
[11]Basic Hacking Skills
[12]1. Learn how to program.
[13]2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run
it.
[14]3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
[15]4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
[16]Status in the Hacker Culture
[17]1. Write open-source software
[18]2. Help test and debug open-source software
[19]3. Publish useful information
[20]4. Help keep the infrastructure working
[21]5. Serve the hacker culture itself
[22]The Hacker/Nerd Connection
[23]Points For Style
[24]Historical Note: Hacking, Open Source, and Free Software
[25]Other Resources
[26]Frequently Asked Questions
[glider.png]
Why This Document?
As editor of the [27]Jargon File and author of a few other well-known
documents of similar nature, I often get email requests from
enthusiastic network newbies asking (in effect) "how can I learn to be
a wizardly hacker?". Back in 1996 I noticed that there didn't seem to
be any other FAQs or web documents that addressed this vital question,
so I started this one. A lot of hackers now consider it definitive, and
I suppose that means it is. Still, I don't claim to be the exclusive
authority on this topic; if you don't like what you read here, write
your own.
If you are reading a snapshot of this document offline, the current
version lives at [28]
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html.
Note: there is a list of [29]Frequently Asked Questions at the end of
this document. Please read these—twice—before mailing me any questions
about this document.
Numerous translations of this document are available: [30]Arabic
[31]Belorussian [32]Bulgarian [33]Chinese, [34]Czech. [35]Danish
[36]Dutch [37]Estonian [38]French [39]German, [40]Greek [41]Hungarian,
[42]Italian [43]Hebrew, [44]Japanese [45]Lithuanian [46]Norwegian,
[47]Persian [48]Polish [49]Portuguese (Brazilian), [50]Romanian
[51]Spanish, [52]Turkish, and [53]Swedish. Note that since this
document changes occasionally, they may be out of date to varying
degrees.
The five-dots-in-nine-squares diagram that decorates this document is
called a glider. It is a simple pattern with some surprising properties
in a mathematical simulation called [54]Life that has fascinated
hackers for many years. I think it makes a good visual emblem for what
hackers are like — abstract, at first a bit mysterious-seeming, but a
gateway to a whole world with an intricate logic of its own. Read more
about the glider emblem [55]here.
If you find this document valuable, please support me on [56]Patreon or
[57]SubscribeStar. And consider also supporting other hackers who have
produced code that you use and value via [58]Loadsharers. Lots of small
but continuing donations add up quickly, and can free the people who
have given you gifts of their labor to create more value.
What Is a Hacker?
The [59]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 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 phreaking 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 [60]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.
[glider.png]
The Hacker Attitude
[61]1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
[62]2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
[63]3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
[64]4. Freedom is good.
[65]5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
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.
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.
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. No problem should ever have to be solved 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.
Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice."
does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred,
or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often,
we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying
the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide
that we can do better. What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or
institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good
solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels.
(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 fine
to use your hacking skills to support a family or even get rich, as
long as you don't forget your loyalty to your art and your fellow
hackers while 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 a situation
that bores them.)
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 valued. 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. That attitude is vital to becoming a hacker.
[glider.png]
Basic Hacking Skills
[66]1. Learn how to program.
[67]2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
[68]3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
[69]4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
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. I have written a more
detailed [70]evaluation of Python. Good [71]tutorials are available at
the [72]Python web site; there's an excellent third-party one at
[73]Computer Science Circles.
I used to recommend Java as a good language to learn early, but
[74]this critique has changed my mind (search for “The Pitfalls of Java
as a First Programming Language” within it). A hacker cannot, as they
devastatingly put it “approach problem-solving like a plumber in a
hardware store”; you have to know what the components actually do. Now
I think it is probably best to learn C and Lisp first, then Java.
There is perhaps a more general point here. If a language does too much
for you, it may be simultaneously a good tool for production and a bad
one for learning. It's not only languages that have this problem; web
application frameworks like RubyOnRails, CakePHP, Django may make it
too easy to reach a superficial sort of understanding that will leave
you without resources when you have to tackle a hard problem, or even
just debug the solution to an easy one.
A better alternative to Java is to learn [75]Go. This relatively new
language is pretty easy to move to from Python, and learning it give
you a serious leg up on the possible next step, which is learning C.
Additionally, one of the unknowns about the next few years is to what
extent Go might actually displace C as a systems-programming language.
There is a possible future in which that happens over much of C's
traditional range.
If you get into serious programming, you will eventually have to learn
C, the core language of Unix. C++ is very closely related to C; if you
know one, learning the other will not be difficult. Neither language is
a good one to try learning as your first, however. And, actually, the
more you can avoid programming in C the more productive you will be.
C is very efficient, and very sparing of your machine's resources.
Unfortunately, C gets that efficiency by requiring you to do a lot of
low-level management of resources (like memory) by hand. All that
low-level code is complex and bug-prone, and will soak up huge amounts
of your time on debugging. With today's machines as powerful as they
are, this is usually a bad tradeoff — it's smarter to use a language
that uses the machine's time less efficiently, but your time much more
efficiently. Thus, Python.
Other languages of particular importance to hackers include [76]Perl
and [77]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. Many people
use Perl in the way I suggest you should use Python, to avoid C
programming on jobs that don't require C's machine efficiency. You will
need to be able to understand their code.
LISP is worth learning for a different reason — 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. (You can get some
beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying
editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the
GIMP.)
It's best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/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. Go is not quite to the point where it can
be included among the most important hacking languages, but it seems
headed for that status.
But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even
merely a programmer simply by accumulating languages — 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 get
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.
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. You can
learn language features — bits of knowledge — from books, but the
mind-set that makes that knowledge into living skill can be learned
only by practice and apprenticeship. What will do it is (a) reading
code and (b) writing code.
Peter Norvig, who is one of Google's top hackers and the co-author of
the most widely used textbook on AI, has written an excellent essay
called [78]Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years. His "recipe for
programming success" is worth careful attention.
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.
I have had more to say about this learning process in [79]How To Learn
Hacking. It's a simple set of instructions, but not an easy one.
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'll assume you have a personal computer or can get access to one.
(Take a moment to appreciate how much that means. The hacker culture
originally evolved back when computers were so expensive that
individuals could not own them.) The single most important step any
newbie can take toward 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 Microsoft Windows machine or
under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance
while wearing a body cast.
Under Mac OS X it's possible, but only part of the system is open
source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be
careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's
proprietary code. If you concentrate on the Unix under the hood you can
learn some useful things.
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 Unix. For this reason, the hacker culture today
is pretty strongly Unix-centered. (This wasn't always true, and some
old-time hackers still 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 Microsoft 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 hosting, 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.
For more about learning Unix, see [80]The Loginataka. You might also
want to have a look at [81]The Art Of Unix Programming.
The blog [82]Let's Go Larval! is a window on the learning process of a
new Linux user that I think is unusually lucid and helpful. The post
[83]How I Learned Linux makes a good starting point.
To get your hands on a Linux, see the [84]Linux Online! site; you can
download from there or (better idea) find a local Linux user group to
help you with installation.
During the first ten years of this HOWTO's life, I reported that from a
new user's point of view, all Linux distributions are almost
equivalent. But in 2006-2007, an actual best choice emerged:
[85]Ubuntu. While other distros have their own areas of strength,
Ubuntu is far and away the most accessible to Linux newbies. Beware,
though, of the hideous and nigh-unusable "Unity" desktop interface that
Ubuntu introduced as a default a few years later; the Xubuntu or
Kubuntu variants are better.
You can find BSD Unix help and resources at [86]www.bsd.org.
A good way to dip your toes in the water is to boot up what Linux fans
call a [87]live CD, a distribution that runs entirely off a CD or USB
stick without having to modify your hard disk. This may be slow,
because CDs are slow, but it's a way to get a look at the possibilities
without having to do anything drastic.
I have written a primer on the [88]basics of Unix and the Internet.
I used to recommend against installing either Linux or BSD as a solo
project if you're a newbie. Nowadays the installers have gotten good
enough that doing it entirely on your own is possible, even for a
newbie. Nevertheless, I still recommend making contact with your local
Linux user's group and asking for help. It can't hurt, and may smooth
the process.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
Most of the things the hacker culture has built do their work out of
sight, helping run factories and offices and universities without any
obvious impact on how non-hackers live. The Web is the one big
exception, the huge shiny hacker toy that even politicians admit has
changed the world. For this reason alone (and a lot of other good ones
as well) you need to learn how to work the Web.
This doesn't just mean learning how to drive a browser (anyone can do
that), but learning how to write HTML, the Web's markup language. If
you don't know how to program, writing HTML will teach you some mental
habits that will help you learn. So build a home page.
But just having a home page isn't anywhere near good enough to make you
a hacker. The Web is full of home pages. Most of them are pointless,
zero-content sludge — very snazzy-looking sludge, mind you, but sludge
all the same (for more on this see [89]The HTML Hell Page).
To be worthwhile, your page must have content — it must be interesting
and/or useful to other hackers. And that brings us to the next topic...
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously
been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural
imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged
me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker
culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function
in the hacker community.
Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a
second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a
birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a
richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore
simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of
technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they
get done at all).
Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently
never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been
an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of
developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.
Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have
language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is
semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many
hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy
writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found
the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers.
If you can't yet write competently, learn to.
[glider.png]
Status in the Hacker Culture
[90]1. Write open-source software
[91]2. Help test and debug open-source software
[92]3. Publish useful information
[93]4. Help keep the infrastructure working
[94]5. Serve the hacker culture itself
Like most cultures without a money economy, hackerdom runs on
reputation. You're trying to solve interesting problems, but how
interesting they are, and whether your solutions are really good, is
something that only your technical peers or superiors are normally
equipped to judge.
Accordingly, when you play the hacker game, you learn to keep score
primarily by what other hackers think of your skill (this is why you
aren't really a hacker until other hackers consistently call you one).
This fact is obscured by the image of hacking as solitary work; also by
a hacker-cultural taboo (gradually decaying since the late 1990s but
still potent) against admitting that ego or external validation are
involved in one's motivation at all.
Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture.
You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people,
nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but
rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time,
your creativity, and the results of your skill.
There are basically five kinds of things you can do to be respected by
hackers:
1. Write open-source software
The first (the most central and most traditional) is to write programs
that other hackers think are fun or useful, and give the program
sources away to the whole hacker culture to use.
(We used to call these works “free software”, but this confused too
many people who weren't sure exactly what “free” was supposed to mean.
Most of us now prefer the term “[95]open-source” software).
Hackerdom's most revered demigods are people who have written large,
capable programs that met a widespread need and given them away, so
that now everyone uses them.
But there's a bit of a fine historical point here. While hackers have
always looked up to the open-source developers among them as our
community's hardest core, before the mid-1990s most hackers most of the
time worked on closed source. This was still true when I wrote the
first version of this HOWTO in 1996; it took the mainstreaming of
open-source software after 1997 to change things. Today, "the hacker
community" and "open-source developers" are two descriptions for what
is essentially the same culture and population — but it is worth
remembering that this was not always so. (For more on this, see [96]the
section called “Historical Note: Hacking, Open Source, and Free
Software”.)
2. Help test and debug open-source software
They also serve who stand and debug open-source software. In this
imperfect world, we will inevitably spend most of our software
development time in the debugging phase. That's why any open-source
author who's thinking will tell you that good beta-testers (who know
how to describe symptoms clearly, localize problems well, can tolerate
bugs in a quickie release, and are willing to apply a few simple
diagnostic routines) are worth their weight in rubies. Even one of
these can make the difference between a debugging phase that's a
protracted, exhausting nightmare and one that's merely a salutary
nuisance.
If you're a newbie, try to find a program under development that you're
interested in and be a good beta-tester. There's a natural progression
from helping test programs to helping debug them to helping modify
them. You'll learn a lot this way, and generate good karma with people
who will help you later on.
3. Publish useful information
Another good thing is to collect and filter useful and interesting
information into web pages or documents like Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) lists, and make those generally available.
Maintainers of major technical FAQs get almost as much respect as
open-source authors.
4. Help keep the infrastructure working
The hacker culture (and the engineering development of the Internet,
for that matter) is run by volunteers. There's a lot of necessary but
unglamorous work that needs done to keep it going — administering
mailing lists, moderating newsgroups, maintaining large software
archive sites, developing RFCs and other technical standards.
People who do this sort of thing well get a lot of respect, because
everybody knows these jobs are huge time sinks and not as much fun as
playing with code. Doing them shows dedication.
5. Serve the hacker culture itself
Finally, you can serve and propagate the culture itself (by, for
example, writing an accurate primer on how to become a hacker :-)).
This is not something you'll be positioned to do until you've been
around for while and become well-known for one of the first four
things.
The hacker culture doesn't have leaders, exactly, but it does have
culture heroes and tribal elders and historians and spokespeople. When
you've been in the trenches long enough, you may grow into one of
these. Beware: hackers distrust blatant ego in their tribal elders, so
visibly reaching for this kind of fame is dangerous. Rather than
striving for it, you have to sort of position yourself so it drops in
your lap, and then be modest and gracious about your status.
[glider.png]
The Hacker/Nerd Connection
Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to be a nerd to be a hacker.
It does help, however, and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being
something of a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really
important things, like thinking and hacking.
For this reason, many hackers have adopted the label ‘geek’ as a badge
of pride — it's a way of declaring their independence from normal
social expectations (as well as a fondness for other things like
science fiction and strategy games that often go with being a hacker).
The term 'nerd' used to be used this way back in the 1990s, back when
'nerd' was a mild pejorative and 'geek' a rather harsher one; sometime
after 2000 they switched places, at least in U.S. popular culture, and
there is now even a significant geek-pride culture among people who
aren't techies.
If you can manage to concentrate enough on hacking to be good at it and
still have a life, that's fine. This is a lot easier today than it was
when I was a newbie in the 1970s; mainstream culture is much friendlier
to techno-nerds now. There are even growing numbers of people who
realize that hackers are often high-quality lover and spouse material.
If you're attracted to hacking because you don't have a life, that's OK
too — at least you won't have trouble concentrating. Maybe you'll get a
life later on.
[glider.png]
Points For Style
Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are
some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help.
They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do
them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of
hacking.
* Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common
stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of
hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are
very able writers.
* Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way
to meet hackers and proto-hackers).
* Join a hackerspace and make things (another good way to meet
hackers and proto-hackers).
* Train in a martial-arts form. The kind of mental discipline
required for martial arts seems to be similar in important ways to
what hackers do. The most popular forms among hackers are
definitely Asian empty-hand arts such as Tae Kwon Do, various forms
of Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, or Ju Jitsu. Western fencing and Asian
sword arts also have visible followings. In places where it's
legal, pistol shooting has been rising in popularity since the late
1990s. The most hackerly martial arts are those which emphasize
mental discipline, relaxed awareness, and precise control, rather
than raw strength, athleticism, or physical toughness.
* Study an actual meditation discipline. The perennial favorite among
hackers is Zen (importantly, it is possible to benefit from Zen
without acquiring a religion or discarding one you already have).
Other styles may work as well, but be careful to choose one that
doesn't require you to believe crazy things.
* Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar
kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how
to sing.
* Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.
The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you
are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not
completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and
right-brain skills that seems to be important; hackers need to be able
to both reason logically and step outside the apparent logic of a
problem at a moment's notice.
Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. For
true hackers, the boundaries between "play", "work", "science" and
"art" all tend to disappear, or to merge into a high-level creative
playfulness. Also, don't be content with a narrow range of skills.
Though most hackers self-describe as programmers, they are very likely
to be more than competent in several related skills — system
administration, web design, and PC hardware troubleshooting are common
ones. A hacker who's a system administrator, on the other hand, is
likely to be quite skilled at script programming and web design.
Hackers don't do things by halves; if they invest in a skill at all,
they tend to get very good at it.
Finally, 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.
The only reputation you'll make doing any of these things is as a twit.
Hackers have long memories — it could take you years to live your early
blunders down enough to be accepted.
The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification.
Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly
behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life
forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it
associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In
the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser.
[glider.png]
Historical Note: Hacking, Open Source, and Free Software
When I originally wrote this how-to in late 1996, some of the
conditions around it were very different from the way they look today.
A few words about these changes may help clarify matters for people who
are confused about the relationship of open source, free software, and
Linux to the hacker community. If you are not curious about this, you
can skip straight to the FAQ and bibliography from here.
The hacker ethos and community as I have described it here long
predates the emergence of Linux after 1990; I first became involved
with it around 1976, and, its roots are readily traceable back to the
early 1960s. But before Linux, most hacking was done on either
proprietary operating systems or a handful of quasi-experimental
homegrown systems like MIT's ITS that were never deployed outside of
their original academic niches. While there had been some earlier
(pre-Linux) attempts to change this situation, their impact was at best
very marginal and confined to communities of dedicated true believers
which were tiny minorities even within the hacker community, let alone
with respect to the larger world of software in general.
What is now called "open source" goes back as far as the hacker
community does, but until 1985 it was an unnamed folk practice rather
than a conscious movement with theories and manifestos attached to it.
This prehistory ended when, in 1985, arch-hacker Richard Stallman
("RMS") tried to give it a name — "free software". But his act of
naming was also an act of claiming; he attached ideological baggage to
the "free software" label which much of the existing hacker community
never accepted. As a result, the "free software" label was loudly
rejected by a substantial minority of the hacker community (especially
among those associated with BSD Unix), and used with serious but silent
reservations by a majority of the remainder (including myself).
Despite these reservations, RMS's claim to define and lead the hacker
community under the "free software" banner broadly held until the
mid-1990s. It was seriously challenged only by the rise of Linux. Linux
gave open-source development a natural home. Many projects issued under
terms we would now call open-source migrated from proprietary Unixes to
Linux. The community around Linux grew explosively, becoming far larger
and more heterogenous than the pre-Linux hacker culture. RMS
determinedly attempted to co-opt all this activity into his "free
software" movement, but was thwarted by both the exploding diversity of
the Linux community and the public skepticism of its founder, Linus
Torvalds. Torvalds continued to use the term "free software" for lack
of any alternative, but publicly rejected RMS's ideological baggage.
Many younger hackers followed suit.
In 1996, when I first published this Hacker HOWTO, the hacker community
was rapidly reorganizing around Linux and a handful of other
open-source operating systems (notably those descended from BSD Unix).
Community memory of the fact that most of us had spent decades
developing closed-source software on closed-source operating systems
had not yet begun to fade, but that fact was already beginning to seem
like part of a dead past; hackers were, increasingly, defining
themselves as hackers by their attachments to open-source projects such
as Linux or Apache.
The term "open source", however, had not yet emerged; it would not do
so until early 1998. When it did, most of the hacker community adopted
it within the following six months; the exceptions were a minority
ideologically attached to the term "free software". Since 1998, and
especially after about 2003, the identification of 'hacking' with
'open-source (and free software) development' has become extremely
close. Today there is little point in attempting to distinguish between
these categories, and it seems unlikely that will change in the future.
It is worth remembering, however, that this was not always so.
[glider.png]
Other Resources
Paul Graham has written an essay called [97]Great Hackers, and another
on [98]Undergraduation, in which he speaks much wisdom.
Younger hackers might find [99]Things Every Hacker Once Knew
interesting and useful.
I have also written [100]A Brief History Of Hackerdom.
I have written a paper, [101]The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which
explains a lot about how the Linux and open-source cultures work. I
have addressed this topic even more directly in its sequel
[102]Homesteading the Noosphere.
Rick Moen has written an excellent document on [103]how to run a Linux
user group.
Rick Moen and I have collaborated on another document on [104]How To
Ask Smart Questions. This will help you seek assistance in a way that
makes it more likely that you will actually get it.
If you need instruction in the basics of how personal computers, Unix,
and the Internet work, see [105]The Unix and Internet Fundamentals
HOWTO.
When you release software or write patches for software, try to follow
the guidelines in the [106]Software Release Practice HOWTO.
If you enjoyed the Zen poem, you might also like [107]Rootless Root:
The Unix Koans of Master Foo.
[glider.png]
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: [108]How do I tell if I am already a hacker?
Q: [109]Will you teach me how to hack?
Q: [110]How can I get started, then?
Q: [111]When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?
Q: [112]How long will it take me to learn to hack?
Q: [113]Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?
Q: [114]Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
Q: [115]How can I get the password for someone else's account?
Q: [116]How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
Q: [117]How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
Q: [118]I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?
Q: [119]I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?
Q: [120]Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?
Q: [121]Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?
Q: [122]Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?
Q: [123]What language should I learn first?
Q: [124]What kind of hardware do I need?
Q: [125]I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work
on?
Q: [126]Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?
Q: [127]But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make
a living?
Q: [128]Where can I get a free Unix?
Q:
How do I tell if I am already a hacker?
A:
Ask yourself the following three questions:
* Do you speak code, fluently?
* Do you identify with the goals and values of the hacker community?
* Has a well-established member of the hacker community ever called
you a hacker?
If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, you are already
a hacker. No two alone are sufficient.
The first test is about skills. You probably pass it if you have the
minimum technical skills described earlier in this document. You blow
right through it if you have had a substantial amount of code accepted
by an open-source development project.
The second test is about attitude. If the [129]five principles of the
hacker mindset seemed obvious to you, more like a description of the
way you already live than anything novel, you are already halfway to
passing it. That's the inward half; the other, outward half is the
degree to which you identify with the hacker community's long-term
projects.
Here is an incomplete but indicative list of some of those projects:
Does it matter to you that Linux improve and spread? Are you passionate
about software freedom? Hostile to monopolies? Do you act on the belief
that computers can be instruments of empowerment that make the world a
richer and more humane place?
But a note of caution is in order here. The hacker community has some
specific, primarily defensive political interests — two of them are
defending free-speech rights and fending off "intellectual-property"
power grabs that would make open source illegal. Some of those
long-term projects are civil-liberties organizations like the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the outward attitude properly
includes support of them. But beyond that, most hackers view attempts
to systematize the hacker attitude into an explicit political program
with suspicion; we've learned, the hard way, that these attempts are
divisive and distracting. If someone tries to recruit you to march on
your capitol in the name of the hacker attitude, they've missed the
point. The right response is probably “Shut up and show them the code.”
The third test has a tricky element of recursiveness about it. I
observed in [130]the section called “What Is a Hacker?” that being a
hacker is partly a matter of belonging to a particular subculture or
social network with a shared history, an inside and an outside. In the
far past, hackers were a much less cohesive and self-aware group than
they are today. But the importance of the social-network aspect has
increased over the last thirty years as the Internet has made
connections with the core of the hacker subculture easier to develop
and maintain. One easy behavioral index of the change is that, in this
century, we have our own T-shirts.
Sociologists, who study networks like those of the hacker culture under
the general rubric of "invisible colleges", have noted that one
characteristic of such networks is that they have gatekeepers — core
members with the social authority to endorse new members into the
network. Because the "invisible college" that is hacker culture is a
loose and informal one, the role of gatekeeper is informal too. But one
thing that all hackers understand in their bones is that not every
hacker is a gatekeeper. Gatekeepers have to have a certain degree of
seniority and accomplishment before they can bestow the title. How much
is hard to quantify, but every hacker knows it when they see it.
Q:
Will you teach me how to hack?
A:
Since first publishing this page, I've gotten several requests a week
(often several a day) from people to "teach me all about hacking".
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to do this; my own
hacking projects, and working as an open-source advocate, take up 110%
of my time.
Even if I did, hacking is an attitude and skill you basically have to
teach yourself. You'll find that while real hackers want to help you,
they won't respect you if you beg to be spoon-fed everything they know.
Learn a few things first. Show that you're trying, that you're capable
of learning on your own. Then go to the hackers you meet with specific
questions.
If you do email a hacker asking for advice, here are two things to know
up front. First, we've found that people who are lazy or careless in
their writing are usually too lazy and careless in their thinking to
make good hackers — so take care to spell correctly, and use good
grammar and punctuation, otherwise you'll probably be ignored.
Secondly, don't dare ask for a reply to an ISP account that's different
from the account you're sending from; we find people who do that are
usually thieves using stolen accounts, and we have no interest in
rewarding or assisting thievery.
Q:
How can I get started, then?
A:
The best way for you to get started would probably be to go to a LUG
(Linux user group) meeting. You can find such groups on the [131]LDP
General Linux Information Page; there is probably one near you,
possibly associated with a college or university. LUG members will
probably give you a Linux if you ask, and will certainly help you
install one and get started.
Your next step (and your first step if you can't find a LUG nearby)
should be to find an open-source project that interests you. Start
reading code and reviewing bugs. Learn to contribute, and work your way
in.
The only way in is by working to improve your skills. If you ask me
personally for advice on how to get started, I will tell you these
exact same things, because I don't have any magic shortcuts for you. I
will also mentally write you off as a probable loser - because if you
lacked the stamina to read this FAQ and the intelligence to understand
from it that the only way in is by working to improve your skills,
you're hopeless.
Another interesting possibility is to go visit a hackerspace. There is
a burgeoning movement of people creating physical locations - maker's
clubs - where they can hang out to work on hardware and software
projects together, or work solo in a cogenial atmosphere. Hackerspaces
often collect tools and specialized equipment that would be too
expensive or logistically inconvenient for individuals to own.
Hackerspaces are easy to find on the Internet; one may be located near
you.
Q:
When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?
A:
Any age at which you are motivated to start is a good age. Most people
seem to get interested between ages 15 and 20, but I know of exceptions
in both directions.
Q:
How long will it take me to learn to hack?
A:
That depends on how talented you are and how hard you work at it. Most
people who try can acquire a respectable skill set in eighteen months
to two years, if they concentrate. Don't think it ends there, though;
in hacking (as in many other fields) it takes about ten years to
achieve mastery. And if you are a real hacker, you will spend the rest
of your life learning and perfecting your craft.
Q:
Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?
A:
If you're asking this question, it almost certainly means you're
thinking about trying to hack under Microsoft Windows. This is a bad
idea in itself. When I compared trying to learn to hack under Windows
to trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast, I wasn't
kidding. Don't go there. It's ugly, and it never stops being ugly.
There is a specific problem with Visual Basic; mainly that it's not
portable. Though there is a prototype open-source implementations of
Visual Basic, the applicable ECMA standards don't cover more than a
small set of its programming interfaces. On Windows most of its library
support is proprietary to a single vendor (Microsoft); if you aren't
extremely careful about which features you use — more careful than any
newbie is really capable of being — you'll end up locked into only
those platforms Microsoft chooses to support. If you're starting on a
Unix, much better languages with better libraries are available.
Python, for example.
Also, like other Basics, Visual Basic is a poorly-designed language
that will teach you bad programming habits. No, don't ask me to
describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. Learn a
well-designed language instead.
One of those bad habits is becoming dependent on a single vendor's
libraries, widgets, and development tools. In general, any language
that isn't fully supported under at least Linux or one of the BSDs,
and/or at least three different vendors' operating systems, is a poor
one to learn to hack in.
Q:
Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
A:
No. Anyone who can still ask such a question after reading this FAQ is
too stupid to be educable even if I had the time for tutoring. Any
emailed requests of this kind that I get will be ignored or answered
with extreme rudeness.
Q:
How can I get the password for someone else's account?
A:
This is cracking. Go away, idiot.
Q:
How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
A:
This is cracking. Get lost, moron.
Q:
How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
A:
This is cracking. Begone, cretin.
Q:
I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?
A:
No. Every time I've been asked this question so far, it's been from
some poor sap running Microsoft Windows. It is not possible to
effectively secure Windows systems against crack attacks; the code and
architecture simply have too many flaws, which makes securing Windows
like trying to bail out a boat with a sieve. The only reliable
prevention starts with switching to Linux or some other operating
system that is designed to at least be capable of security.
Q:
I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?
A:
Yes. Go to a DOS prompt and type "format c:". Any problems you are
experiencing will cease within a few minutes.
Q:
Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?
A:
The best way is to find a Unix or Linux user's group local to you and
go to their meetings (you can find links to several lists of user
groups on the [132]LDP site at ibiblio).
(I used to say here that you wouldn't find any real hackers on IRC, but
I'm given to understand this is changing. Apparently some real hacker
communities, attached to things like GIMP and Perl, have IRC channels
now.)
Q:
Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?
A:
I maintain a [133]Linux Reading List HOWTO that you may find helpful.
The [134]Loginataka may also be interesting.
For an introduction to Python, see the [135]tutorial on the Python
site.
Q:
Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?
A:
No. Hacking uses very little formal mathematics or arithmetic. In
particular, you won't usually need trigonometry, calculus or analysis
(there are exceptions to this in a handful of specific application
areas like 3-D computer graphics). Knowing some formal logic and
Boolean algebra is good. Some grounding in finite mathematics
(including finite-set theory, combinatorics, and graph theory) can be
helpful.
Much more importantly: you need to be able to think logically and
follow chains of exact reasoning, the way mathematicians do. While the
content of most mathematics won't help you, you will need the
discipline and intelligence to handle mathematics. If you lack the
intelligence, there is little hope for you as a hacker; if you lack the
discipline, you'd better grow it.
I think a good way to find out if you have what it takes is to pick up
a copy of Raymond Smullyan's book What Is The Name Of This Book?.
Smullyan's playful logical conundrums are very much in the hacker
spirit. Being able to solve them is a good sign; enjoying solving them
is an even better one.
Q:
What language should I learn first?
A:
HTML if you don't already know it. There are a lot of glossy,
hype-intensive bad HTML books out there, and distressingly few good
ones. The one I like best is [136]HTML: The Definitive Guide.
But HTML is not a full programming language. When you're ready to start
programming, I would recommend starting with [137]Python. You will hear
a lot of people recommending Perl, but it's harder to learn and (in my
opinion) less well designed.
C is really important, but it's also much more difficult than either
Python or Perl. Don't try to learn it first.
Windows users, do not settle for Visual Basic. It will teach you bad
habits, and it's not portable off Windows. Avoid.
Q:
What kind of hardware do I need?
A:
It used to be that personal computers were rather underpowered and
memory-poor, enough so that they placed artificial limits on a hacker's
learning process. This stopped being true in the mid-1990s; any machine
from an Intel 486DX50 up is more than powerful enough for development
work, X, and Internet communications, and the smallest disks you can
buy today are plenty big enough.
The important thing in choosing a machine on which to learn is whether
its hardware is Linux-compatible (or BSD-compatible, should you choose
to go that route). Again, this will be true for almost all modern
machines. The only really sticky areas are modems and wireless cards;
some machines have Windows-specific hardware that won't work with
Linux.
There's a FAQ on hardware compatibility; the latest version is
[138]here.
Q:
I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work on?
A:
No, because I don't know your talents or interests. You have to be
self-motivated or you won't stick, which is why having other people
choose your direction almost never works.
Q:
Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?
A:
No, you don't. Not that Microsoft isn't loathsome, but there was a
hacker culture long before Microsoft and there will still be one long
after Microsoft is history. Any energy you spend hating Microsoft would
be better spent on loving your craft. Write good code — that will bash
Microsoft quite sufficiently without polluting your karma.
Q:
But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make a
living?
A:
This seems unlikely — so far, the open-source software industry seems
to be creating jobs rather than taking them away. If having a program
written is a net economic gain over not having it written, a programmer
will get paid whether or not the program is going to be open-source
after it's done. And, no matter how much "free" software gets written,
there always seems to be more demand for new and customized
applications. I've written more about this at the [139]Open Source
pages.
Q:
Where can I get a free Unix?
A:
If you don't have a Unix installed on your machine yet, elsewhere on
this page I include pointers to where to get the most commonly used
free Unix. To be a hacker you need motivation and initiative and the
ability to educate yourself. Start now...
[glider.png]
References
1.
http://catb.org/~esr/
2. mailto:
[email protected]
3.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#why_this
4.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is
5.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#attitude
6.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe1
7.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2
8.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe3
9.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe4
10.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe5
11.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#basic_skills
12.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1
13.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills2
14.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills3
15.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4
16.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#status
17.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect1
18.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect2
19.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect3
20.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect4
21.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect5
22.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#nerd_connection
23.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#style
24.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#history
25.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#resources
26.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#FAQ
27.
http://www.catb.org/jargon
28.
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
29.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#FAQ
30.
http://www.abdulibrahim.com/كيف-تصبح-هاكر/
31.
http://moneyaisle.com/worldwide/how-to-become-a-hacker-be
32.
http://weknowyourdreams.com/questions.html
33.
http://zer4tul.github.io/docs/hacker-howto.html#hacker-howto
34.
http://scientificachievements.com/jak-se-stat-hackerem/
35.
http://www.olemichaelsen.dk/hacker-howto.html
36.
https://nobullshitseeds.com/translate/hacken-leren/
37.
http://www.kakupesa.net/hacker/
38.
http://thomasgil.com/hacker.html
39.
http://www.linuxtaskforce.de/hacker-howto-ger.html
40.
https://sophron.latthi.com/hacker-howto-gr.html
41.
http://www.forallworld.com/hogyan-valhat-egy-hacker/
42.
http://www.victorfleur.com/documents/hacker.html
43.
http://he.wikisource.org/wiki/איך_להיות_האקר
44.
http://cruel.org/freeware/hacker.html
45.
http://rtfb.lt/hacker-howto-lt.html
46.
http://stian.atlantiscrew.net/doc/hacker-howto.html
47.
http://ashiyane.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20570
48.
http://michalp.net/blog/posts/hacker-howto
49.
http://jvdm.sdf.org/pt/raquer-howto
50.
http://garaj.xhost.ro/hacker-howto/hacker-howto.ro.htm
51.
http://www.sindominio.net/biblioweb/telematica/hacker-como.html
52.
http://www.belgeler.org/howto/hacker-howto/hacker-howto.html
53.
http://www1.tripnet.se/~mly/open/faqs/hacker-howto.se.html
54.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Artificial_Life/Cellular_Automata/
55.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/
56.
http://patreon.com/esr
57.
https://www.subscribestar.com/esr
58.
http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/
59.
http://www.catb.org/jargon
60. news:alt.2600
61.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe1
62.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2
63.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe3
64.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe4
65.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe5
66.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1
67.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills2
68.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills3
69.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4
70.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3882
71.
https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/
72.
https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
73.
http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/
74.
http://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2008/200801/200801-Dewar.pdf
75.
https://golang.org/
76.
http://www.perl.com/
77.
http://www.lisp.org/
78.
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
79.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacking-howto.html
80.
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html
81.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/
82.
https://letsgolarval.wordpress.com/
83.
https://letsgolarval.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/how-i-learned-linux/
84.
http://www.linux.org/
85.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
86.
http://www.bsd.org/
87.
http://www.livecdnews.com/
88.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/index.html
89.
http://catb.org/~esr/html-hell.html
90.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect1
91.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect2
92.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect3
93.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect4
94.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#respect5
95.
http://www.opensource.org/
96.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#history
97.
http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
98.
http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html
99.
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/things-every-hacker-once-knew
100.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker-history.html
101.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/index.html
102.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/
103.
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Linux_PR/newlug.html
104.
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
105.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO//Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/
106.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO/index.html
107.
http://catb.org/~esr//writings/unix-koans
108.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#hacker_already
109.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#teach_hack
110.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#getting_started
111.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#when_start
112.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#how_long
113.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#closed_lang
114.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#I_want_to_crack_and_Im_an_idiot
115.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#passwords
116.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#crackmail
117.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#crackop
118.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#anti_crack
119.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#windows_grief
120.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#real_hackers
121.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#books
122.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#mathematics
123.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#language_first
124.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#hardware
125.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#started2
126.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#MS_hater
127.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#no_living
128.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#problems
129.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#attitude
130.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is
131.
http://www.tldp.org/links/index.html
132.
http://www.tldp.org/
133.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Reading-List-HOWTO/index.html
134.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html
135.
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html
136.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/html5/
137.
http://www.python.org/
138.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/index.html
139.
http://www.opensource.org/
