I take issue with you, Sir. This post has changed my life. I'm so happy I read it. Before reading it I had a fancy idea from "Hollywood" as to what a hacker was

I take issue with you, Sir. This post has changed my life. I'm so happy I read it. Before reading it I had a fancy idea from "Hollywood" as to what a hacker was, coupled with a strong interest in computers. I could never understand just "how" people did things with computers that actually made them work -- commanded them. This essay gave me a view into that world. Sure, you can argue that if a person gives an opinion of what it means to be "X", then he superimposes his own idea of "X" upon the abstract "X", as it were. But I believe that that abstract "X" doesn't exist (in and of itself), and all we have are labels ("hacker") which lend a solidity to something that is inherently fluid. Even if there is such a concrete abstract that we all understand and agree on (Plato's 'perfect form', if you will), in the bottom of your heart (and logically, for that matter), you must acknowledge that the abstract "hacker" is far superior than any of the forms you and I can conceive (name drop here if you wish). All we can manage are ghosts and reflections of that, sometimes beautiful, but inherently incomplete. I thank Mr Raymond for this gem in particular: The Hacker Attitude 1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. 2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice. 3. Boredom and drudgery are evil. 4. Freedom is good. 5. Attitude is no substitute for competence. Which enlightened my twelve year old mind in a manner that I fear is no longer possible. I read this back when I was 12 in 2000. It got me into programming, made me learn to use Linux. That Zen Koan at the beginning is something that has grown with me over the years, it took me a long time to see how loaded those six lines are; therein truly lies the means to mastery of any path. I will never forget the feeling of realising that my partitioning command had failed and now I had no access to my windows machine (and thus, the internet and anybody that could help me). Luckily, I had printed out the Gentoo manual (I was obsessed with apparent speed increases that could be achieved by compiling everything for your own arch) and I managed to get a dial up connection (yes, we still had dial-up in South Africa in 2000 :) working and some basic text-based browsing to continue the mission. ah.