The Hacker Test online

THE HACKER TEST

This test was conceived and written by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas.
(Herewith a compendium of fact and folklore about computer hackerdom, cunningly disguised as a test.)

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SCORING:

Scoring - Answer 'yes' for each item that you have done, or each question that you can answer correctly.

If your score is between: You are:

0x000 and 0x010 Computer Illiterate

0x011 and 0x040 a User

0x041 and 0x080 an Operator

0x081 and 0x0C0 a Nerd

0x0C1 and 0x100 a Hacker

0x101 and 0x180 a Wizard

0x181 and 0x200 a Guru

Note: If you don't understand the scoring, stop here!

In the original "Hacker Test" the status of Wizard and Guru are inverted. Neverthless, is commonly accepted (also according to the Jargon File) that a Computer Guru has a greater knowledge than a Computer Wizard.

And now for the questions...

Have you ever used a computer? Yes No
- for more than 4 hours continuously? Yes No
- for more than 8 hours? Yes No
- for more than 16 hours? Yes No
- for more than 32 hours? Yes No
Have you ever patched paper tape? Yes No
While programming, have you ever missed a class? Yes No
- Missed an examination? Yes No
- Missed a wedding? Yes No
- Missed your own wedding? Yes No
Have you ever programmed while intoxicated? Yes No
- Did it make sense the next day? Yes No
Have you ever written a flight simulator? Yes No
Have you ever voided the warranty on your equipment? Yes No
Ever change the value of 4? Yes No
- Unintentionally? Yes No
- In a language other than Fortran? Yes No
Do you use DWIM to make life interesting? Yes No
Have you named a computer? Yes No
Do you complain when a "feature" you use gets fixed? Yes No
Do you eat slime-molds? Yes No
Do you know how many days old you are? Yes No
Have you ever wanted to download pizza? Yes No
Have you ever invented a computer joke? Yes No
- Did someone not 'get' it? Yes No
Can you recite Jabberwocky? Yes No
- Backwards? Yes No
Have you seen "Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land"? Yes No
Have you seen "Tron"? Yes No
Have you seen "Wargames"? Yes No
Do you know what ASCII stands for? Yes No
- EBCDIC? Yes No
Can you read and write ASCII in hex or octal? Yes No
Do you know the names of all the ASCII control codes? Yes No
Can you read and write EBCDIC in hex? Yes No
Can you convert from EBCDIC to ASCII and vice versa? Yes No
Do you know what characters are the same in both ASCII and EBCDIC? Yes No
Do you know maxint on your system? Yes No
Ever define your own numerical type to get better precision? Yes No
Can you name powers of two up to 2**16 in arbitrary order? Yes No
- up to 2**32? Yes No
- up to 2**64? Yes No
Can you read a punched card, looking at the holes? Yes No
- feeling the holes? Yes No
Have you ever patched binary code? Yes No
- While the program was running? Yes No
Have you ever used program overlays? Yes No
Have you met any IBM vice-president? Yes No
Do you know Dennis, Bill, or Ken? Yes No
Have you ever taken a picture of a CRT? Yes No
Have you ever played a videotape on your CRT? Yes No
Have you ever digitized a picture? Yes No
Did you ever forget to mount a scratch monkey? Yes No
Have you ever optimized an idle loop? Yes No
Did you ever optimize a bubble sort? Yes No
Does your terminal/computer talk to you? Yes No
Have you ever talked into an acoustic modem? Yes No
- Did it answer? Yes No
Can you whistle 300 baud? Yes No
- 1200 baud? Yes No
Can you whistle a telephone number? Yes No
Have you witnessed a disk crash? Yes No
Have you made a disk drive "walk"? Yes No
Can you build a puffer train? Yes No
- Do you know what it is? Yes No
Can you play music on your line printer? Yes No
- Your disk drive? Yes No
- Your tape drive? Yes No
Do you have a Snoopy calendar? Yes No
- Is it out-of-date? Yes No
Do you have a line printer picture of...
- Woody Allen? Yes No
- the Mona Lisa? Yes No
- the Enterprise? Yes No
- Einstein? Yes No
- Oliver? Yes No
Have you ever made a line printer picture? Yes No
Have you ever had your face on a line printer picture? Yes No
Do you know what this stands for?
- DASD Yes No
- Emacs Yes No
- ITS Yes No
- RSTS/E Yes No
- SNA Yes No
- Spool Yes No
- TCP/IP Yes No
Have you ever used...
- TPU? Yes No (editor, not turbo pascal unit)
- TECO? Yes No
- Emacs? Yes No
- ed? Yes No
- vi? Yes No
- Xedit (in VM/CMS)? Yes No
- SOS? Yes No
- EDT? Yes No
- Wordstar? Yes No
Have you ever written a CLIST? Yes No
Have you ever programmed in...
- the X windowing system? Yes No
- CICS? Yes No
Have you ever received a Fax or a photocopy of a floppy? Yes No
Have you ever shown a novice the "any" key? Yes No
- Was it the power switch? Yes No
Have you ever attended...
- Usenix? Yes No
- DECUS? Yes No
- SHARE? Yes No
- SIGGRAPH? Yes No
- NetCon? Yes No
Have you ever participated in a standards group? Yes No
Have you ever debugged machine code over the telephone? Yes No
Have you ever seen voice mail? Yes No
- Can you read it? Yes No
Do you solve word puzzles with an on-line dictionary? Yes No
Have you ever taken a Turing test? Yes No
- Did you fail? Yes No
Ever drop a card deck? Yes No
- Did you successfully put it back together? Yes No
- Without looking? Yes No
Have you ever used IPCS? Yes No
Have you ever received a case of beer with your computer? Yes No
Does your computer come in 'designer' colors? Yes No
Ever interrupted a UPS? Yes No
Ever mask an NMI? Yes No
Have you ever set off a Halon system? Yes No
- Intentionally? Yes No
- Do you still work there? Yes No
Have you ever hit the emergency power switch? Yes No
- Intentionally? Yes No
Do you have any defunct documentation? Yes No
- Do you still read it? Yes No
Ever reverse-engineer or decompile a program? Yes No
- Did you find bugs in it? Yes No
Ever help the person behind the counter with their terminal/computer? Yes No
Ever tried rack mounting your telephone? Yes No
Ever thrown a computer from more than two stories high? Yes No
Ever patched a bug the vendor does not acknowledge? Yes No
Ever fix a hardware problem in software? Yes No
- Vice versa? Yes No
Ever belong to a user/support group? Yes No
Ever been mentioned in Computer Recreations? Yes No
Ever had your activities mentioned in the newspaper? Yes No
- Did you get away with it? Yes No
Ever engage a drum brake while the drum was spinning? Yes No
Ever write comments in a non-native language? Yes No
Ever physically destroy equipment from software? Yes No
Ever tried to improve your score on the Hacker Test? Yes No
Do you take listings with you to lunch? Yes No
- To bed? Yes No
Ever patch a microcode bug? Yes No
- around a microcode bug? Yes No
Can you program a Turing machine? Yes No
Can you convert postfix to prefix in your head? Yes No
Can you convert hex to octal in your head? Yes No
Do you know how to use a Kleene star? Yes No
Have you ever starved while dining with philosophers? Yes No
Have you solved the halting problem? Yes No
- Correctly? Yes No
Ever deadlock trying eating spaghetti? Yes No
Ever written a self-reproducing program? Yes No
Ever swapped out the swapper? Yes No
Can you read a state diagram? Yes No
- Do you need one? Yes No
Ever create an unkillable program? Yes No
- Intentionally? Yes No
Ever been asked for a cookie? Yes No
Ever speed up a system by removing a jumper? Yes No

Do you know...

who wrote Rogue? Yes No
who wrote Rogomatic? Yes No

Do you know Gray code? Yes No
Do you know what HCF means? Yes No
- Ever use it? Yes No
- Intentionally? Yes No
Do you know what a lace card is? Yes No
- Ever make one? Yes No
Do you know the end of the epoch? Yes No
- Have you celebrated the end of an epoch? Yes No
- Did you have to rewrite code? Yes No
Do you know the difference between DTE and DCE? Yes No
Do you know the RS-232C pinout? Yes No
- Can you wire a connector without looking? Yes No

Do you have...

a copy of Dec Wars? Yes No
the Canonical Collection of Lightbulb Jokes? Yes No
a copy of the Hacker's dictionary? Yes No
- Did you contribute to it? Yes No
a flowchart template? Yes No
- Is it unused? Yes No
your own fortune-cookie file? Yes No
the Anarchist's Cookbook? Yes No
- Ever make anything from it? Yes No
Do you own...
- a modem? Yes No
- a terminal? Yes No
- a toy computer? Yes No
- a personal computer? Yes No
- a minicomputer? Yes No
- a mainframe? Yes No
- a supercomputer? Yes No
- a hypercube? Yes No
- a printer? Yes No
- a laser printer? Yes No
- a tape drive? Yes No
- an outmoded peripheral device? Yes No
Do you have a programmable calculator? Yes No
- Is it RPN? Yes No
Have you ever owned more than 1 computer? Yes No
- 4 computers? Yes No
- 16 computers? Yes No
Do you have a SLIP line? Yes No
- a T1 line? Yes No
Do you have a separate phone line for your terminal/computer? Yes No
- Is it illegal? Yes No
Do you have core memory? Yes No
- drum storage? Yes No
- bubble memory? Yes No
Do you use more than...
- 16 megabytes of disk space? Yes No
- 256 megabytes? Yes No
- 1 gigabyte? Yes No
- 16 gigabytes? Yes No
- 256 gigabytes? Yes No
- 1 terabyte? Yes No
Do you have an optical disk/disk drive? Yes No
Do you have a personal magnetic tape library? Yes No
- Is it unlabelled? Yes No
Do you own more than 16 floppy disks? Yes No
- 64 floppy disks? Yes No
- 256 floppy disks? Yes No
- 1024 floppy disks? Yes No
Do you have any 8-inch disks? Yes No
Do you have an internal stack? Yes No
Do you have a clock interrupt? Yes No
Do you own volumes 1 to 3 of _The Art of Computer Programming_? Yes No
- Have you done all the exercises? Yes No
- Do you have a MIX simulator? Yes No
- Can you name the unwritten volumes? Yes No
Can you quote from _The Mythical Man-month_? Yes No
- Did you participate in the OS/360 project? Yes No
Do you have a TTL handbook? Yes No
Do you have printouts more than three years old? Yes No

Career

Do you have a job? Yes No
- Have you ever had a job? Yes No
- Was it computer-related? Yes No
Do you work irregular hours? Yes No
Have you ever been a system administrator? Yes No
Do you have more megabytes than megabucks? Yes No
Have you ever downgraded your job to upgrade your processing power? Yes No
Is your job secure? Yes No
- Do you have code to prove it? Yes No
Have you ever had a security clearance? Yes No

Games

Have you ever played Pong? Yes No
Have you ever won Pong? Yes No
Have you ever played...
- Spacewar? Yes No
- Star Trek? Yes No
- Wumpus? Yes No
- Lunar Lander? Yes No
- Empire? Yes No
Have you ever beaten...
- Moria 4.8? Yes No
- Rogue 3.6? Yes No
- Rogue 5.3? Yes No
- Larn? Yes No
- Hack 1.0.3? Yes No
- Nethack 2.4? Yes No
Can you get a better score on Rogue than Rogomatic? Yes No
Have you ever solved Adventure? Yes No
- Zork? Yes No
Have you ever written any redcode? Yes No
Have you ever written an adventure program? Yes No
- a real-time game? Yes No
- a multi-player game? Yes No
- a networked game? Yes No
Can you out-doctor Eliza? Yes No

Hardware

Have you ever used a light pen? Yes No
- did you build it? Yes No
Have you ever used...
- a teletype? Yes No
- a paper tape? Yes No
- a decwriter? Yes No
- a card reader/punch? Yes No
- a SOL? Yes No
Have you ever built...
- an Altair? Yes No
- a Heath/Zenith computer? Yes No
Do you know how to use...
- an oscilliscope? Yes No
- a voltmeter? Yes No
- a frequency counter? Yes No
- a logic probe? Yes No
- a wirewrap tool? Yes No
- a soldering iron? Yes No
- a logic analyzer? Yes No
Have you ever designed an LSI chip? Yes No
- has it been fabricated? Yes No
Have you ever etched a printed circuit board? Yes No

Historical

Have you ever toggled in boot code on the front panel? Yes No
- from memory? Yes No
Can you program an Eniac? Yes No
Ever seen a 90 column card? Yes No

IBM

Do you recite IBM part numbers in your sleep? Yes No
Do you know what IBM part number 7320154 is? Yes No
Do you understand 3270 data streams? Yes No
Do you know what the VM privilege classes are? Yes No
Have you IPLed an IBM off the tape drive? Yes No
- off a card reader? Yes No
Can you sing something from the IBM Songbook? Yes No

Languages

Do you know more than 4 programming languages? Yes No
- 8 languages? Yes No
- 16 languages? Yes No
- 32 languages? Yes No
Have you ever designed a programming language? Yes No
Do you know what Basic stands for? Yes No
- Pascal? Yes No
Can you program in Basic? Yes No
- Do you admit it? Yes No
Can you program in Cobol? Yes No
- Do you deny it? Yes No
Do you know...
- Pascal? Yes No
- Modula-2? Yes No
- Oberon? Yes No
- More than two Wirth languages? Yes No
- a Nicklaus Wirth joke? Yes No
- Algol-60? Yes No
- Algol-W? Yes No
- Algol-68? Yes No
Do you understand the Algol-68 report? Yes No
Do you like two-level grammars? Yes No
Can you program in assembler on 2 different machines? Yes No
- on 4 different machines? Yes No
- on 8 different machines? Yes No
Do you know...
- APL? Yes No
- Ada? Yes No
- BCPL? Yes No
- C++? Yes No
- C? Yes No
- Comal? Yes No
- Eiffel? Yes No
- Forth? Yes No
- Fortran? Yes No
- Hypertalk? Yes No
- Icon? Yes No
- Lisp? Yes No
- Logo? Yes No
- MIIS? Yes No
- MUMPS? Yes No
- PL/I? Yes No
- Pilot? Yes No
- Plato? Yes No
- Prolog? Yes No
- RPG? Yes No
- Rexx (or ARexx)? Yes No
- SETL? Yes No
- Smalltalk? Yes No
- Snobol? Yes No
- VHDL? Yes No
- any assembly language? Yes No
Can you talk VT-100? Yes No
- Postscript? Yes No
- SMTP? Yes No
- UUCP? Yes No
- English? Yes No

Micros

Ever copy a copy-protected disk? Yes No
Ever create a copy-protection scheme? Yes No
Have you ever made a "flippy" disk? Yes No
Have you ever recovered data from a damaged disk? Yes No
Ever boot a naked floppy? Yes No

Networking

Have you ever been logged in to two different timezones at once? Yes No
Have you memorized the UUCP map for your country? Yes No
- For any country? Yes No
Have you ever found a sendmail bug? Yes No
- Was it a security hole? Yes No
Have you memorized the HOSTS.TXT table? Yes No
- Are you up to date? Yes No
Can you name all the top-level nameservers and their addresses? Yes No
Do you know RFC-822 by heart? Yes No
- Can you recite all the errors in it? Yes No
Have you written a Sendmail configuration file? Yes No
- Does it work? Yes No
- Do you mumble "defocus" in your sleep? Yes No
Do you know the max packet lifetime? Yes No

Operating Systems

Can you use BSD Unix? Yes No
- non-BSD Unix? Yes No
- AIX? Yes No
- VM/CMS? Yes No
- VMS? Yes No
- MVS? Yes No
- VSE? Yes No
- RSTS/E? Yes No
- CP/M? Yes No
- COS? Yes No
- NOS? Yes No
- CP-67? Yes No
- RT-11? Yes No
- MS-DOS? Yes No
- Finder? Yes No
- PRODOS? Yes No
- more than one OS for the TRS-80? Yes No
- Tops-10? Yes No
- Tops-20? Yes No
- OS-9? Yes No
- OS/2? Yes No
- AOS/VS? Yes No
- Multics? Yes No
- ITS? Yes No
- Vulcan? Yes No
Have you ever paged or swapped off a tape drive? Yes No
- Off a card reader/punch? Yes No
- Off a teletype? Yes No
- Off a networked (non-local) disk? Yes No
Have you ever found an operating system bug? Yes No
- Did you exploit it? Yes No
- Did you report it? Yes No
- Was your report ignored? Yes No
Have you ever crashed a machine? Yes No
- Intentionally? Yes No

People

Do you know any people? Yes No
- more than one? Yes No
- more than two? Yes No

Personal

Are your shoelaces untied? Yes No
Do you interface poorly with strangers? Yes No
Are you able to recite phone numbers for half-a-dozen computer systems but unable to recite your own? Yes No
Do you log in before breakfast? Yes No
Do you consume more than LD-50 caffeine a day? Yes No
Do you answer either-or questions with "yes"? Yes No
Do you own an up-to-date copy of any operating system manual? Yes No
- *every* operating system manual? Yes No
Do other people have difficulty using your customized environment? Yes No
Do you dream in any programming languages? Yes No
Do you have difficulty focusing on three-dimensional objects? Yes No
Do you ignore mice? Yes No
Do you despise the CAPS LOCK key? Yes No
Do you believe menus belong in restaurants? Yes No
Do you have a Mandelbrot hanging on your wall? Yes No
Have you ever decorated with magnetic tape or punched cards? Yes No
Do you have a disk platter or a naked floppy hanging in your home? Yes No
Have you ever seen the dawn? Yes No
- Twice in a row? Yes No
Do you use "foobar" in daily conversation? Yes No
- "bletch"? Yes No
Do you use the "P convention"? Yes No
Do you automatically respond to any user question with RTFM? Yes No
- Do you know what it means? Yes No
Do you think garbage collection means memory management? Yes No
Do you have problems allocating horizontal space in your room/office? Yes No
Do you read Scientific American in bars to pick up women? Yes No
Is your license plate computer-related? Yes No
Have you ever taken the Purity test? Yes No
Ever have an out-of-CPU experience? Yes No
Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Yes No
Do you talk to the person next to you via computer? Yes No

Programming

Can you write a Fortran compiler? Yes No
- In TECO? Yes No
Can you read a machine dump? Yes No
Can you disassemble code in your head? Yes No
Have you ever written...
- a compiler? Yes No
- an operating system? Yes No
- a device driver? Yes No
- a text processor? Yes No
- a display hack? Yes No
- a database system? Yes No
- an expert system? Yes No
- an edge detector? Yes No
- a real-time control system? Yes No
- an accounting package? Yes No
- a helpful virus? Yes No
- a prophylactic? Yes No
Have you ever written a biorhythm program? Yes No
- Did you sell the output? Yes No
- Was the output arbitrarily invented? Yes No
Have you ever computed pi to more than a thousand decimal places? Yes No
- the number e? Yes No
Ever find a prime number of more than a hundred digits? Yes No
Have you ever written self-modifying code? Yes No
- Are you proud of it? Yes No
Did you ever write a program that ran correctly the first time? Yes No
- Was it longer than 20 lines? Yes No
- 100 lines? Yes No
- Was it in assembly language? Yes No
- Did it work the second time? Yes No
Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively? Yes No
- Non-recursively? Yes No
- Using the Troff text formatter? Yes No
Ever submit an entry to the Obfuscated C code contest? Yes No
- Did it win? Yes No
- Did your entry inspire a new rule? Yes No
Do you know Duff's device? Yes No
Do you know Jensen's device? Yes No
Ever spend ten minutes trying to find a single-character error? Yes No
- More than an hour? Yes No
- More than a day? Yes No
- More than a week? Yes No
- Did the first person you show it to find it immediately? Yes No

Unix

Can you use Berkeley Unix? Yes No
- Non-Berkeley Unix? Yes No
Can you distinguish between sections 4 and 5 of the Unix manual? Yes No
Can you find TERMIO in the System V release 2 documentation? Yes No
Have you ever mounted a tape as a Unix file system? Yes No
Have you ever built Minix? Yes No
Can you answer "quiz function ed-command" correctly? Yes No
- How about "quiz ed-command function"? Yes No

Usenet

Do you read news? Yes No
- More than 32 newsgroups? Yes No
- More than 256 newsgroups? Yes No
- All the newsgroups? Yes No
Have you ever posted an article? Yes No
- Do you post regularly? Yes No
Have you ever posted a flame? Yes No
- Ever flame a cross-posting? Yes No
- Ever flame a flame? Yes No
- Do you flame regularly? Yes No
Ever have your program posted to a source newsgroup? Yes No
Ever forge a posting? Yes No
Ever form a new newsgroup? Yes No
- Does it still exist? Yes No
Do you remember...
- CSNEWS? Yes No
- mod.ber? Yes No
- the Stupid People's Court? Yes No
- Bandy-grams Yes No

Phreaking

Have you ever built a black box? Yes No
Can you name all of the 'colors' of boxes? Yes No
- and their associated functions? Yes No
Does your touch tone phone have 16 DTMF buttons on it? Yes No
Did the breakup of MaBell create more opportunities for you? Yes No

It may take a while on Internet Explorer

If your score is between:	You are:
0x000 and 0x010	Computer Illiterate
0x011 and 0x040	a User
0x041 and 0x080	an Operator
0x081 and 0x0C0	a Nerd
0x0C1 and 0x100	a Hacker
0x101 and 0x180	a Wizard
0x181 and 0x200	a Guru