Hacker not Cracker

Eric S. Raymond's guide "Hacker not Cracker" defines a hacker as a member of the expert programmer and networking culture that originated the term, and says hackers build things while crackers break them. The guide says that people who want to become hackers must come to believe a set of attitudes, including that the world is full of fascinating problems, that no problem should have to be solved twice, that boredom and drudgery are evil, that freedom is good, and that attitude is no substitute for competence. Raymond notes that he started the document in 1996 because no other web documents addressed how newcomers could learn to be hackers, and the article lists translations into many languages.