Correct title: "Become a Web-savy Pythonista in 6-9 months" If you want to become a hacker, develop these traits: 1. A deep interest in technology, particularl

Correct title: "Become a Web-savy Pythonista in 6-9 months" If you want to become a hacker, develop these traits: 1. A deep interest in technology, particularly programming and computers, and a habit of fueling this interest by learning and tinkering. 2. A sense of pride in one's work and a desire to compete with oneself. That's it. Really. I've always understood a 'hacker' to be someone who programs (or something similar) because he enjoys it. That is, as Aristotle would say, he hacks for the sake of hacking as opposed to for the sake of something else (like making a living.) If you become like that, knowledge and skill should come naturally. If you want a set of things to learn: 1. Some programming languages, the more the better, but use discretion: Make sure you learn them well enough to use them. 2. Unix. 3. Windows. (like you're going to be able to avoid it.) 4. Math. 5. A text editor. Preferably Emacs and Vim. (learn both of them) 6. Web protocols: TCP/IP, HTTP, FTP, when and how to use them. 7. Markup Languages (including HTML but don't stop there) 8. Whatever else interests you. You don't have to know anything about computers to be a 'hacker' in the original sense of the word, but it seems to have narrowed it's scope in general usage. Some background: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200304/hack.html http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200304/hack.html