Back in the day, as an aspiring young hacker, I stumbled across a textfile called "The Hacker Purity Test".
The preface contained a line in parenthesis:
"(Herewith a compendium of fact and folklore about computer hackerdom, cunningly disguised as a test.)"
What followed was a long list of questions related to hackerdom. Inside jokes, understood only by those who play the game. The idea being, you score a point for each answer you can claim.
The file shows your possible score rankings, counted in hexadecimal, going from "Computer Illiterate" up to "a Wizard". It says, "Note: If you don't understand the scoring, stop here."
The scoring is actually the first lesson in The Hacker Purity Test.
That note isn't intended to discourage. Rather, it's intended to encourage you to go learn. Understand why the scoring represents numbers in the way it does.
Hacking has always been a meritocracy. The hacking community is unique in that, many members of the community only meet in the digital world, where everyone is text on a screen -- a mind at a keyboard. We respect skills, knowledge, and the curiosity to learn. The goal is to reach "a Wizard" level, implying great knowledge and ability.
This "test" was my first real view into the world of hacking. Some of the questions were easily understood. For instance, "Have you ever missed a class while programming?"
Others were more arcane but there were always clues. For instance, "Ever change the value of 4?". Followed shortly after with, "In a language other than Fortran?" There was our clue. If you were curious, you could learn Fortran and understand the joke.
This was great. I had a map into this fascinating world that I could explore. It wasn't all spelled out plainly, but it gave me a starting point. Rabbit holes to go down. Books and movies to watch (e.g., War Games, Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land). Languages to learn. Granted, a lot of this was outdated even by the time I started in 1997. I've never seen paper tape in-use. But, even this information was useful, as knowing how things used to work can help understand how things work now.
I would try to increase my score on the test. This required learning new things. It is the reason I first learned hexadecimal and converting to binary and decimal. Or converting ASCII to hex, and how character encodings work. It might not be easy, it might not be fun, but it's useful. Math is and always has been part of the core of compsci and by extension, hacking.
Programming is also huge in The Hacker Purity Test. How many languages do you know? What can you do with them? This led me to BASIC and C initially, and many more over the years. I eventually learned x86 assembly. If you want to be master of the computer, learn to speak machine. Learn the Deeper Magic.
The Hacker Purity Test taught me about RFCs, UNIXes, Usenet, the LD-50 of caffeine, and even phone phreaking. There are even "annotated" or "commented" versions of the test out there, if you just want to learn more about hacker history.
If you've never read it, and you've stuck with me this far, I hope you'll take some time and see how you do. Maybe even try to up your score ;)