I think what you describe as your experience of hacking is mostly a process of learning through experimentation. Many people learn differently - some first want

I think what you describe as your experience of hacking is mostly a process of learning through experimentation. Many people learn differently - some first want to understand by studying themselves and do not like to experiment. Others like to be taught and told and follow instructions. For managers it's really important to understand that learning curves are very different - someone may be faced with new technology and write functional code within the day, another person may need several days. It doesn't mean one is worse than the other over the longer term. I have worked with people who would read through programming language books and only then would start coding, while I met others who would start entire projects from sample code. Like yourself I really like the experimentation path. Regarding the career of someone as a hacker, there are many of them, they just have to find the right environment with enough freedom to work in. Difficult to find it in a corporate environment, but I have seen it happen.