Hacker Archetypes by Eric S. Raymond


Im not a hacker but I would fit into a JOAT type. So, not good a anything but willing to try and persist in almost anything. That's probably why I became a scientist.
 
If I were a hacker (I'm not sure I'm one), I'd pick:

JOAT - Castellan - Translator (in no specific order)

Cheers, Magic Sam
 
I'm no hacker... though non-techy people assume that of me, I'm 'that guy who's good with computers'... but seriously, I'm no hacker.
If a device can do something chances are I'll be able to make it do it (through research and trial and error).... but if the Internet didn't exist, my abilities would plummet.

So I guess I would be JOAT (I actually am a jack of all trades IRL) and a bit of prankster.. but only if I disagree with the system.
 
Suppose that I'm most likely the Algorithmicist, based on my usual pursuits. But I don't really class myself as a hacker - they smell, rather a lot.
 
I don't think that classification works (not surprisingly, because ESR). Couldn't fit my coworkers into these categories at all. Thinking about it I usually discriminate according to (constructive) laziness, abstraction and deduction capabilities.
 
Looks like mostly sharpshooter, prankster and JOAT for me. I do have areas where I am a bit stronger, and whatever I know what I am doing or not I will need and until I either figure something out, break it, or fix it, assuming something wasn't working. As long as it isn't a production system, or something important, breaking it is a valid part of using it for me, and I will do my damndest to put it all back sorta how I got it, if not better. Earlier in life I wasn't so careful poking around, which got me in minor trouble, but also led to me finding places where I could be beneficial, and sharing my knowledge, and learning from others. I hear "it can't be done" as a challenge, and can spend (waste?) massive amounts of time trying to show that it can (although I am completely fine admitting that I couldn't do whatever it was, always including the disclaimer that that doesn't prove it can't be done, as there are many people better at the thing than me).
[doublepost=1492448121,1492447979][/doublepost]If this gets refined, perhaps someone can make this into a quiz so FB and Twitter twerps can share it with all their friends.
 
I'm not a hacker, yet if I were, it would be like Tinkerer/prankster.
Tinkerer, as I use different aspects of engineering, I like both electronics and software for it, and for the world to communicate with it.
And the thing about terrific whole-systems is true. My Master thesis was a compression algorithm consisting of multiple blocks (models of encoding data). Blocks were engineered very well. But a whole system was initially coded to eight 10-15kB BAT files under WinXP.
Prankster, as I like to mess with systems. This famous "what would happen if i... [e.g. write a "Train rail" in "price" field of this form?]". Another thing is that I want to know how something works inside. Doesn't matter, mechanical, software, electronic or human's reasoning.
 
Tinker, back when I had one foot into becoming one ( a crossroad in my life I remember vividly. I had the choice to advance my knowledge and go deeper into system manipulation and diving head first into stuff that I knew was illegal.) Somewhere in a box are my backups of all of my transgressions as well as nine colour coded hard drives. I know one of them has a copy of a black market shopping list for a ship.

I also stumbled across a BBS system that lead to a community of hackers. I browsed there forum for a bit and sucked up some knowledge. I wish I could have figured out how some of them were doing things to bypass ISPs and using decommissioned satellites to acquire internet access.

I wonder what prison I would be in if I stuck around there. Maybe I'm less of an tinker and more of an idiot.
 
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