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 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?
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#hacker_alrea...