However, to me and to many others I know, "Hacker" is an ideal that we strive towards... an asymptote... (Stallman is there...Linus is there...I am not going to be there at least for quite some time. But I am trying hard.)
> Hacker" is an ideal that we strive towards... an asymptote...
I disagree with that. There can't be an asymptote because there's no upper bound. You strive toward infinity and "hacker" is just a mile marker along the way.
True. From my point of reference, it at least seems like an asymptote.
The more I learn, the more questions I am coming up with - which seem to increase my mass as I accelerate. May be one day I might have a weird look on my face and be enlightened. ( Airport lady voice gently says "You have arrived" :-p )
No, that day won't come. You'll have lots of little epiphanies along the way every time you grok some new big beautiful idea, but there isn't going to be any sudden moment of True Enlightenment.
I suspect you've already passed the "hacker" milestone without realizing it. The metaphors you're using are a good sign. How do you rate on this rubric?
I am not sure of the answer for: "Has a well-established member of the hacker community ever called you a hacker?". But working on cool stuff will earn this soon or later I guess. So, thanks a lot for the encouragement.
Well, bear this in mind: you can consider condition 3 the least important. While conditions 1 and 2 are essential components of being a hacker, condition 3 is just a symptom. (1 && 2 && 3) is sufficient; (1 && 2) is necessary but not sufficient; (3) is neither necessary nor sufficient.
It's not like (3) is some sort of formal induction ceremony. It'll just be an offhand comment that the speaker probably won't remember making a week later. Most often it'll take the form of "you should talk to Fred; he's an XYZ hacker too" during a technical discussion about XYZ. It also tends to occur more often in person than over the internet. If you're worried because it hasn't happened yet, but most of your socialization is on the internet rather than meatspace, then don't sweat it.
I'm with parent. I do enjoy and learn a TON from this site but I doubt I would qualify for any sort of "hacker" title. I'm very much a H.I.T. (hacker in training).
However, to me and to many others I know, "Hacker" is an ideal that we strive towards... an asymptote... (Stallman is there...Linus is there...I am not going to be there at least for quite some time. But I am trying hard.)