If you want to be considered a hacker, you have to...hack. That doesn't mean you have to have a github account. It's the new hotness, sure, but you can get by w

If you want to be considered a hacker, you have to...hack. That doesn't mean you have to have a github account. It's the new hotness, sure, but you can get by without it. What do you hack? No one would argue that someone who is a core developer for, say, Emacs isn't a hacker merely because Emacs uses bzr for source control. Github is a means to an end: simple sharing and collaboration of code. If your hacking doesn't require that, don't get a github account. But if you can't point to what you've done -- this is not necessarily "show me the code"; if you build a website that does something cool, or hack some hardware, that'll count -- you're probably not a hacker. Worry about your projects, not github.