Very interesting article! I love reading about hacking in the classical sense: Using a system in way it’s not intended to accomplish an unexpected/unintended outcome. It’s a shame the media has perverted the term to exclusively refer to cyber attackers (“crackers”).

In some ways, I feel the hacker mindset embodies how I like to approach systems and problems. I like to dig in, get my hands dirty, and see how things work. In programming, this often means a lot of stack traces, breakpoints, and print statements. I’ve jumped into a lot of new areas and figured things out on my own.

But on the other hand, I often feel my hacker mindset isn’t nearly as well-developed as some people I meet. That’s probably a lot of imposter syndrome talking. But the things some people do are amazing, things I’d never even think to fathom, let alone attempt, let alone succeed at.