Before being a designer, I wanted to become a hacker.

Published in

Bootcamp

5 min readJan 31, 2022

My journey and an article changed my whole life and way of thinking.

The story began in 2008 when I was a thirsty-to-learn-anything-and-everything student. My field of study was MIS, and most of the stuff we’re studying was by Microsoft. Although Microsoft is doing incredible technology, Microsoft produced everything around me, starting from Windows 95 when I got my first step into the computer. I wasn’t satisfied with that and always wanted to explore something else. not sure whether it is a pricey Mac? But I don’t have enough cash. How about GNU/Linux? This chubby penguin is scary. Everyone mentioning GNU/Linux has to say the black screen and the cyberpunk behind it smashing the keyboard to write mysterious mascots that none of us can understand…

Falling in love with GNU/Linux 🐧

Nevertheless, I decided to break my fear and walk with the penguin.

Can no one help me better than a computer store nearby? I called them and asked them to help me install GNU/Linux on my 265Mb RAM machine. But the expert dude told me no, unfortunately, we don’t have “Windows Linux.”

At this moment, I realized that researching was my homework, and not doing it was my guilt!

Later on, I learned a new word from the beautiful open-source community, “RTFM,” which stands to Read The F****** Manuel. I had to read it in the first place! And this was the first thing I learned in this journey. Always research and discover. Don’t just ask.

I picked Mint as a GNU/Linux distribution as it is super easy for beginners to start with and obviously because I liked its logo, style, and screenshots.

Mint was successfully downloaded burnt on a CD, and boom, Installed! Deep breath. Who is the hacker now? I guess too early, but the first step is accomplished. At least.

I can’t describe how I felt when I opened Google from GNU/Linux to test the internet connection and started exploring my new interface and the file manager the sound effect of clicking or the loading screen. That was incredible!

Now, and after a few months with my lovely Mint, it is time to do my homework and achieve my goal. I Googled “How to become a hacker?”. I’m ready for advanced geeky stuff. 🏴‍☠️

The article / The treasure

How to become a hacker? This was the article name of an article written by Eric Steven Raymond (Aka. ESR) in 2001.

Wikipedia: ESR is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game NetHack. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, currently in print as The New Hacker’s Dictionary.

I was expecting a magical way to become a hacker using GNU/Linux terminal (command line) to have some fun in my spare time, but ESR described the hacker as follows:

The hacker mindset is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.
… If you want to be a hacker, keep reading.

Being a hacker != A cracker 🧠

I kept reading, and after reading each word in ESR article carefully, I started exploring more Linux distros and getting more into programming. I started learning C/C++, PHP/MySQL, Java, a little bit of Python, plus mastering HTML, CSS, and some JS. Also, I managed to find a unique and supportive open-source community in my city Alexandria.

ESR said, “The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.”

And I started looking for something to solve. In 2009 I became more confident. Moved from Mint to more advanced distro Arch Linux, I decided to program software to help Fluxbox users customize the command-line background and foreground and quickly set a desktop photo.

I posted it on the open-source forums. Some appreciated it, some didn’t, and also, It has a bad UX and might be for the wrong target audience since people who use Fluxbox like to interact less with UIs, but I was getting my feet wet.

But, since some people were asking for it in PM. It means I’ve successfully solved a problem. Yaay! It feels like a hacker!

Although I enjoyed writing code a lot for a long time, creating the user interface itself and the look & feel was the most fun.

I’m still thankful to Eric Steven Raymond, who changed my mind with his article.

Still a hacker but in a different way 👨🏻‍💻

Now, as a designer, I’m solving problems without writing code. I c.o.d.e if you know what I mean. If you don’t, then maybe it is interesting to look at my first article, “Yes, designers should learn to c.o.d.e.”

The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved and communicated in the right way to the end-users. Developers are doing a great technical job, and designers make these efforts serviceable.
As ESR declared in his article, “No problem should ever have to be solved twice.” real designers are asking why we are doing this design and what the problem is with the current design.
The designer’s community is massive. Look at the Figma community, Design meetups, or the number of resources available today. The developers/programmers were a step ahead in building their community, but here we are.

And you… 👋

If you are a designer, researching, brainstorming, sketching, communicating, writing, and solving UX issues daily to make people’s lives easier, congratulations, you are a hacker!

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Thank you for your time. If you found my article helpful, please share it with others. Hackers are also sharing.

If you have any feedback, comments, or questions, please don’t hesitate to write them below. 👇

Also, you can stay in touch via Dribbble — Instagram — Linkedin.

Have a lovely day/evening!

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